Kiwi Granita

Trader Joe's had cheap bags of organic kiwi ($2.50 for a pound, about 8 kiwis). So we bought three 3 bags and decided to make granita.

So here's the super simple recipe. Makes enough for about 4 nice size servings.

Ingredients:
10 kiwis, peeled.
3/4 cup sugar
1.5 cups water
5-10 mint leaves (optional, omit if you don't have any around.)
Juice of 3 limes/lemons (or any combination of the two).

1. Heat the sugar and water and mint leaves in a small sauce pan. When all the sugar is dissolved, cut the heat and allow to cool.
2. In the meantime, puree the kiwis and lime/lemon juice until relatively smooth.
3. Strain the mint leaves from the (cooled) syrup. Mix the strained syrup and the kiwi/lime/lemon puree.
4. Place mixture in a wide container/bowl/casserole dish. The "shallower" the mixture, the shorter the freezing time.
5. Place in freezer. Every 20-30 minutes, scrape the side of the bowl and mix. This will ensure freezing is even and that you don't end up with one giant brick of granita and instead get nice little ice crystals. This will take a while, for us, it took about 6 hours (we had to use a smaller dish since we had no room in our freezer).
6. When there is no more runny/liquidy bits, serve, and enjoy!

Cranberry mocktail.

A week ago I got stuck with a lot of cranberry juice cocktail. I'm not much of a juice/soda drinker but I didn't want it to go to waste. Here's my new favorite way to consume it:

Mix an equal volume (or one part to two parts if you want to use less) of cranberry juice cocktail and water (sparkling would be nice) and the juice of half a lime. Enjoy! The cranberry-vodka for the sober folk!

And oh-so-slowly the juice is being consumed.

Something cold for the cold weather: "Sorbet"

As always, Mark Bittman seems to always know how to make things that were once 'hard' or required 'special equipment' suddenly easy and accessible.

Food processor "sorbet".

So one note, it is "sorbet" in quotes because it has some yogurt (milk) whereas real sorbet is just fruit + sugar and then churned. But yogurt is good for you, so that's okay! (Plus you can always use silken tofu, which I haven't tried yet but sound equally delicious.)

The recipe is super easy.

So far I've tried a mixed berry and a mango 'sorbet'. The mango took quite a long time to 'churn' in the food processor. (In fact, it scared us pretty badly the first few pulses). I've also discovered that dried tart montmorency cherries are DELICIOUS on mango sorbet/frozen yogurt.