IN MACARONI LAND.

Waikato Times, Volume XLII, Issue 3424, 9 June 1894, Page 11

IN MACARONI LAND.

Macaroni, not bread, is the staff of life in Italy. In every kitchen, 1 from the lowest to the highest, it is daily cooked in some form, and with "the very. poor it is often almos f the only food. There are as niany modes of serving it as there are grades in the social scale. : ■ The poorest clfisp of pi ople simply boil their macaroni in Raited water. A frequent sight is of', picturesque, ragged, brown-skinned creatures eating long, slippery ropes of boiled macaroni in the open streets. 'With head thrown well back, they hold one end of the long floury ribbon in the fingers high in air. It rapidly grows shorter and shorter, and finally disappears'altogether, i People a little higher in the social Boale still boil macaroni in salted water, but drink cheap Chianti wine with it. In private families and in restaurants of the better class it is cooked in many delicious Ways.

Baked with layers of Swiss and Parmesan cheese, boiled _ with cheese and cream, stewed with veal or chicken broth, or dressed with tomato sauce, bread sauce, or egg sauce—no matter how tho Italian.cook prepares it,, this staple food of their nation is invariably excellent, But, alas! good and palatable as it is, the maearboi consumed in Italy, especK ally in the neighbourhood of Naples, is not manufactured with desirable attention to cleanliness. He who has taken that long drive along the southern coast from Naples to Pompeii, through the town of Torre Annunziata, where macaroni factories so abound, will never forget how his carriage passes between long, lines of the. drying stuff. The wheels almost rub against it as they add their contribution to the large amount of dirt already collected upon the drying macaroni, It hangs on long poles of bamboo, which swing between upright poles. At a distance one might suppose that, all the Neapolitan world had been washing clothes, and that this was drying day, Approaching nearer, the clothes become long, yellowish ribbons of drying " macaroni, It is swung before low, black doorways, and women, men, children, and dogs swarm around it, and rub against it as they pass in and out. Women think nothing of wiping their foiled hands ou the mass. I watched one day a dog covered with mud walk .unmolested in and out of the long, moist strings hung quite within his reach, and nobody thought to chase him away, I have seen worse yet—too unpleasant to relate. But in spite of all this the people seem to find the food sweet and palatable when cooked.

After it is thoroughly dried into crisp, long pipes or ribbons there is little evidence that it has been soiled. Carefully wiped, soaked, and dressed it is perhaps not so unclean as one'might suppose. Yet I was much consoled to learn that this macaroni of Naples is not exported, but kept mainly for the use of the people themselves. That which we .eat at home is prepared in larger, cleaner factories in other parts of Italy. The fabrici, so-called, of southern Italy, are all small, but numerous. They stretch for along distance along the coast toward Pompeii, and line both sides'of the streets. Before almost every door are these long rows of the drying macaroni, flying like flags in the air. > Barefooted men emerge from the doors from time to time, bearing poles of bamboo filled with the freshly-made macaroni, and place them between the upright, waiting "clothespoles," taking away those that are dried and ready for tise. In the warm, sunny air of the south, two or three days' drying makes the dough pipes hard and brittle. Judging from the outside, I wa* prepared for something much worse within when I entered a small macaroni factory. But the interior was comparatively clean. There was a large bare-floored room, with a dark b?amed ceiling, from which dangled many ropes of drying macaroni, and thrown down near the door were bags of the prepared flour of which it is made.

The process of miking it is very simple! The dough is mixed in a trough, or sink, aimply by adding water to the prepared flour. We were told that it is nothing but ?ery glutinous wheat flour, with; a plentiful admixture of dried eggs. When a large mass of putty-like dough has been made, it is J placed under a huge swinging piece of wood to be knended. A»strids of tjib beam sat five or six almost linked, brown-baked men, sse-sawing up ariidown, and pressing the beam by the weight of their bodies into tHe yielding lump of dough, Forward and backward many times they went, the heavy beam making deep creases at one round to erase .them the next, When the, dougph is so thickly kneaded .43 to bo difficult to impress with the 'finger.-!, these brown bodied men spring from their see-saw and carry it to a round press which stands at one side of the room. 'The bottom of this prass, or cylinder, was perforated with boles, throuyh which the . .dough was pushed by a thick plate, or ,plunger, pressed down by a. screw. - This made macaroni 5 without any holes in the sticks " '' When pipe macaroni is made, the • holes; in the bottoiu'are wiitr above than below, and have "mandrils" centred in them, so that the dough, when -'pushed through fcho hole, is pressed abuut a round piece of metal which ,Bhapcs;thft ioside face of the pipe macaroni, • As it'issued in lon" 1 , snaky ropes from the bottom of' the press, a boy violently fanned; them to keep them from storing together, The boy, in bis zeal 1o show the procens to us, and also perhaps with a wild idea of " dusting it off for company," polled out au armful of the

macaroni strips, and energetically beat and flopped I hem' several times against the black floor, (tasty and grimy with tho accumulations of years,

Then, smiling proudly with an air of having done his whole duty, be pre:,, sentcd it'for us to see. It was then, like the r-sst, thrown over a bamboo pole and carried into the open air to dry,—Cape Argus. • ■.' ■ .