Grapefruit Campari Granita
Photo by James Culcasi
I covet my issues of Gourmet magazine. I really think that in the event of a fire I just might try to collect all of the moisture dimpled, oil stained copies I can carry and run. Since it was originally published in 1941, there isn’t a time in my life that it didn’t exist. We didn’t have it in our house when I was growing up, and not until much later did my mother start buying it and ultimately giving her copies to me with sticky notes stuck carefully in articles she knew I would want to read. Even though it’s not something I grew up with, I knew it was out there - an adventure waiting for me.
In my early 20s I worked as a nanny for a couple who lived in a gorgeous house, drove expensive cars, traveled the world, and actually cooked from recipes in Gourmet magazine. They had stacks of them! When the children were napping I would devour each issue, copying recipes that sounded exciting and exotic. It’s been accused of being a food magazine for the elite, and I suppose in the particular situation I found myself then, there is some truth to the accusation, but to me it just felt aspirational and inspirational. It showed me places I longed to visit and listed ingredients I had never heard of. It expanded my world view in a way that still influences how I am drawn to learning about other cultures, through the food. It made me less timid about exploration - still timid, but less timid. It presented, through glorious photos and sometimes impossibly complicated recipes, possibilities I hadn’t before considered.
Later on, as a young wife and mother, I would occasionally splurge on an issue of my own. Now, of course, many of Gourmet’s recipes are easily searchable online, but then the magazine was pure indulgence, something fleeting and to be saved up for. I read them cover to cover in an escapist fantasy, one in which I was not wearing a tattered terrycloth robe covered in spit up. I made quiches for dinner and Rob loved them, even though for some reason real men weren’t supposed to eat them. I made variations on pesto when nobody even knew what pesto was. Gourmet and I were killing it in that robe. Eventually I had an actual subscription and our relationship became comfortable and less exotic, as they do. So much so that I didn’t have an inkling when the end came in October of 2009. I was devastated to think that Ruth Reichl wouldn’t be there waiting for me every month - she was my pied piper who never delivered any false promises, the friend who jotted fun and informative editor’s letters just to me. Kim Severson wrote an article for the New York Times after Gourmet’s demise in which she said that the closing of the magazine felt like a ‘gut punch’ to “…the food elite - especially of an older generation”. Wait, what?
Craig ‘Meathead’ Goldwyn penned a piece called, “Who Killed Gourmet Magazine?” for Huffington Post on October 16, 2009, in which he opined about the possible culprits. Among them are those who write about food online - oh no…. He goes on to link to an article written by Christopher Kimball who delivers the final blow. Kimball, rightfully so, says that, “The world needs fewer opinions and more thoughtful expertise - the kind that comes from real experience, the hard-won, blood-on-the-floor kind.” I completely agree! So, in the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that I am not, nor have I ever been, a recipe developer or a chef. I am an avid recipe follower, a recipe collector who borders on, well, a recipe hoarder. Remember the part about being timid? It makes me feel very uncomfortable to veer from a written recipe - the standing-on-the-edge-of-a-precipice kind of uncomfortable. Who am I to question the proven SCIENCE of the person who tested and retested a recipe until they believed it was at its best? Admittedly, I will sometimes substitute, or outright eliminate, an ingredient if I don’t have it (think PANDEMIC), but I will feel guilty.
Now, having said all that, I have actually made a few things up - or morphed recipes together because I forgot/misplaced the recipe I was looking for. Eventually, it changed so much from the original that it magically became - mine! That’s a very different thing from having the core ‘blood-on-the-floor’ knowledge that one needs to start the process from the very beginning.
I think I can safely say that I am not responsible for killing Gourmet magazine based on the above cited evidence (…and the fact that we just started this blog in 2020). I can adamantly say that I will not be developing any recipes here - I will happily leave that to the experts. At best, what I hope to do is be a kind of friendly recipe curator. Sharing these recipes which I love (and are completely devised by other people) comes close to actually making them for you. If you are timid, consider starting with this one - it’s so easy, which brings me back to Gourmet magazine. In a stroke of genius and capitalism, Gourmet also published many compilation cookbooks which you can still find in used bookstores and from online booksellers.
This granita recipe is from a compilation called Gourmet’s Sweets published in 1998, and it is a perfect summertime recipe that combines some of my favorite things: grapefruit, Campari (I may or may not have too close of a relationship with Campari), and, well…sugar. It is sweet, but also bitter with an edge from the combination of grapefruit and Campari. As with all granita recipes, it is as simple as can be, but it has the power to transport you to another place entirely - perhaps a ristorante all'aperto in Rome after an indulgent plate of pasta. At the very least, it feels a bit fancy. I like to serve it in old jelly jars to cut down on the fancy. I wouldn’t want to be accused of being among the food elite, after all.
Ingredients:
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 cup water
3 cups fresh pink grapefruit juice (from about 4 pink grapefruits), with some pulp
1/4 cup Campari
Garnish: 2-3 inch long pieces fresh grapefruit zest, removed with a vegetable peeler or sprigs of fresh mint
In a saucepan bring sugar and water to a boil, stirring until sugar is dissolved, and cool syrup. Stir in grapefruit juice and Campari. Transfer mixture to a shallow metal baking pan (I use an 8 x 8 pan). Freeze mixture, stirring and crushing lumps with a fork every hour, until mixture is firm but not frozen hard, 3 to 4 hours. Granita can be made 2 days ahead and frozen, covered. Makes about 7 cups.
