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2. Bicycle around Manhattan’s Lower East Side, as my assistant Tara did, looking for a Hispanic seller of snow cones. Ask him where he bought his ice shaver, which looks like a wood plane made of dull aluminum with a compartment on top to trap the shavings. Buy one. Freeze a granita mixture solid, defrost briefly, and scrape shavings of snow from the top of the frozen block.

3. Buy the amazingly effective though overpriced Hawaiice Ice Scraper (model S-200) from the Back to Basics catalog, (800) 688-1989.

Lemon Granita

Corrado Costanzo in Noto

As I had feared, when you use regular supermarket lemons and add sugar to compensate for the acidity, a proper balance is hard to attain.

Then I discovered that Meyer lemons from California make a fine substitute for the green summer lemons of Sicily. (Meyer lemons were named for agricultural adventurer Frank N. Meyer, who discovered them in 1908 growing near Peking in an ornamental pot. They may be a cross between a lemon and a mandarin orange, but nobody knows for sure.) And even when Meyer lemons are unavailable, ordinary lemons can be used to make a satisfying granita by diluting their juice with water and using the zest with great discretion. When Corrado Costanzo zests a lemon, he passes it over a hand grater with such delicacy that he removes only the very outer layer of the fruit’s yellow peel and never even approaches the bitter white pith.

1¼ cups superfine sugar

3 cups spring water

4 Meyer lemons (see Note), either organically grown or carefully washed

Dissolve the sugar in the water in a 2-quart bowl. Very gently grate the lemons with a hand grater held over the bowl. Swish the grater around in the liquid to recover the zest that sticks to it.

Juice the lemons. Pour 1 cup of lemon juice into the bowl and mix well. Pass the mixture through a strainer coarse enough to let through a little of the lemon zest and pulp.

Cover, chill, and freeze.

Note: If you cannot find Meyer lemons, use 3 normal yellow lemons (to yield ¾ cup of juice), 3½ cups of water, and 1½ cups minus 2 tablespoons of sugar. The granita will freeze slowly, but the taste will be excellent.

Maria Grammatico’s Almond Granita

The search for an authentic bitter almond taste took me to various almond extracts (both natural and artificial), commercial almond pastes (European brands once contained real bitter almonds, which can be imported only when they are a minor ingredient in almond paste, not by themselves), and apricot or peach kernels, which also contain amygdalin. This breaks down into benzaldehyde—the essential bitter almond flavor—and prussic acid, a poison. I spoke with several scientists in the flavor industry and learned a lot about the differences between “natural,” “pure,” and artificial benzaldehyde.

I prepared eleven versions of almond milk and arranged a blind tasting. There were three clear winners: (1) the version made by diluting an almond paste we had brought back from the Caffè Finocchiaro in Avola, near Noto in Sicily, full of bitter almonds; (2) my own homemade almond paste containing peach and apricot kernels, blanched and toasted for safety’s sake; and (3) the same homemade paste flavored instead with McCormick “pure almond extract.” Imitation or artificial almond extracts, even McCormick’s, are sorry substitutes, containing synthetic benzaldehyde alone, with none of the numerous other aroma compounds found in true bitter almond oil.

According to the FDA’s labeling standards, “natural” bitter almond oil and almond extract can be made from caccia bark, with a result somewhere between artificial benzaldehyde and the real thing. “Pure” oil and extract must be made from bitter almonds, or from peach, plum, or cherry kernels, which, though they may be chemically distinguishable from bitter almonds, come extremely close. Most commercially available almond pastes on the market today—even those made in Europe—substitute an inferior artificial bitter almond oil for true bitter almonds.

Now it is child’s play to prepare an authentic almond granita