This is what I want at about four o’clock on a hot afternoon, when the caffeine lifts my weary spirits and the iced shards cool me from the inside.
serves 4
scant 1¾ cups very strong espresso
2 tablespoons superfine sugar
1⅓ cups very cold heavy cream
Make the espresso, and while it is still hot, stir in the sugar until it has completely dissolved. Once the coffee is cool, prepare the granita using one of the two methods above (here). While it freezes, whip the cream. Serve the granita in glasses, topped with whipped cream.
It seemed only right that before writing this, on a hot Saturday afternoon in late June, I should walk about 300 yards through streets that echo with afternoon naps to a small kiosk on the corner of via Branca and via Beniamino Franklin. For a moment I thought it was closed, the black metal grilles pulled and padlocked, until I heard an unmistakable sound from the side of the kiosk: the distinct grating swipes, like a coarse spade shoveling tenacious snow, of a metal tool against a block of ice.
In the hot summer months, grattachecca is a Roman institution, served from historic bottle-lined kiosks dotted throughout the city. The name comes from grattare, “to grate,” and checca, an old word for a solid block of ice, and that’s precisely what grattachecca is: ice, shaved or scratched coarsely from a solid block with a metal grater surrounded by a box, then tipped into a plastic cup, embellished with chopped fruit, and covered with fruit syrup. It is the simplest of icy treats, reminiscent of the very first ices made hundreds of years ago from snow. Each grattachecca comes with a spoon and a special straw that has one end flattened into a tiny shovel, making it ideal for prodding, scooping, and sucking. Once you have disciplined the grated ice and the summer heat has reduced everything to a slushy mess, you switch to the spoon, only to return to the straw once the ice has given up completely and you’re left with an inch of sweetened water.
We live in between two kiosks, each of them good, so I try to show loyalty to both and alternate visits as best I can. Maurizio, on the corner opposite the fire station, wears a bandana and both grates and decorates. I generally have lemon and coconut or sour cherry grattachecca decorated with burnt-red bottled amarena (cherries). At the other, Roberto and Rosaria, who have run the black kiosk on via Branca for 25 years, work together in brusque harmony, Roberto grating quickly but precisely and Rosaria doing the rest, cutting the moons of pith and flesh from huge, almost sweet lemons to decorate, then impaling defiantly with the spoon and straw.
Both grattachecca kiosks are well positioned, allowing space for cars to double and triple park, or for motorini, driven with arrogant ease by young Romans with helmets balanced like top hats, to swerve in. On really hot days the queue can stretch for yards and the crowd spills like a dropped grattachecca across the pavement, some leaning on nearby cars, others against walls, the lucky ones having commandeered the sole pair of plastic chairs. At night the kiosks are like beacons, their lights shining almost as luminously as the fruit syrups, the atmosphere warm, slightly sticky and quintessentially Roman.
“Ahò, Nonna, Nonna, che vuoi?” (“Oi, Grandma, Grandma, what do you want?”) a young boy who has reached the front of the queue shouts across the street. “Amarena,” an older woman yells back in flint-hard Roman: “Sempre amarena!” (“always cherry”), before dipping her head back through the window. By the time Luca and I have our icy drinks, the boy has joined his nonna and both are leaning out of the window, their grattachecca balanced on the windowsill, a perfectly framed snapshot of Rome on a hot day.