Giovanna Musumeci is a young woman, volcanic and energetic like her land on the slopes of Etna. Her ice cream parlor located in Randazzo, just below the largest active volcano in Europe, is for over two generations a landmark in Sicily. We can call her a daughter of art, her father Santo handed down to her all the secrets of artisan pastry ever since she was a child. But it’s all Giovanna's merit to have brought a contemporary touch to the creation of ice cream and granita, keeping alive the tradition of sherbet, a word of Arabic origin to indicate sorbet, and neviere.
In Sicily, since the Middle Ages, there was a profession called nivaroli, when men who would collect snow on Mount Etna in the winter and then store it all year round in the snow-wells. To preserve it from the summer heat, the plan was to use snow mixed with sea salt. The collected snow consequently changed from an ingredient to a refrigerator. The well was born, a wooden vat with a zinc bucket inside which could be turned with a crank. The cavity was filled with a mixture of salt and snow, closed by a rolled and pressed jute bag. The mixture froze the contents of the well by subtracting heat and the rotating movement of the blades inside prevented the formation of ice crystals too large. The preparation of Sicilian granita is unique and manages to give the finished product an indefinable consistency on the palate, using only water, sugar, and fruit.
Cherry granita
In the modern formula of Sicilian granita, the snow has been replaced by water and honey by sugar. The manual snow well cooled by ice (or snow) and salt, thanks to the cold technology (mantecatore), has been replaced by the ice-cream maker, allowing the production of that unmistakable creamy, airless and rich in flavor mixture which, thanks to its unusual characteristics, is known to the world today under the name of Sicilian granita.
Giovanna Musumeci's approach to sweet things, as she likes to call them, wasn’t immediate. She has always been involved in enhancing her territory, by creating tourist routes linked to the artistic and gastronomic heritage of the province of Catania. Her soul as a confectioner and ice cream maker started to take hold in adulthood. She decides to give up everything and throw herself feet first in the laboratory, to learn everything there is to know to make her customers happy. Her mission is to express the emotions that only a unique and extraordinary territory like Etna can convey, and to do so she uses granita and ice cream. Giovanna has always known the flavors and aftertaste of ice cream, its aromas, and textures. She has absolutely mastered the raw materials and already at her first gelateria everything was very clear to her, she wanted to tell her "sense of gelato", similar to the thought of her father Santo, but with a more contemporary twist, up to date, mused balances and combinations.
Coffee granita with whipped cream
For Giovanna, ice cream must be a food that gratifies and nourishes, "it’s not only a mixture of sugar, milk, and cream, but it’s an expression of your being, of your land of origin, of the richness of its fruits, of your mood". Her toughest judge is her father, who from his first taste, amazed by the goodness, understood that the time had come to give way to his daughter. If you want to try her granita, make a stop at the Pasticceria Santo Musumeci in Piazza Santa Maria di Randazzo, in the province of Catania. It‘s one of the most fascinating villages in Etna, beautiful to visit with the hot summer sun and equally beautiful with the snow in winter.