Macaroni with Parmesan cheese: Boil two ounces of macaroni in half a pint of water, with an ounce of butter, until perfectly tender. If the water evaporates add a little more, taking care that the macaroni does not stick to the stewpan, or become broken. When it is done, drain away the water and stir in two ounces of good cheese grated, cayenne pepper and salt to taste. Keep stirring until the cheese is dissolved. Pour on to a hot dish and serve. A little butter may be stirred into the macaroni before the cheese, and is an improvement.
Through the Riviera, and indeed in the south of France, one meets with many peculiar dishes. No one who has read Thackeray need be reminded of bouillabaise, that famous fish chowder of Marseilles. It is, however, only our chowder with much red pepper. A cook can try it if she chooses, and perhaps achieve it after many failures.
There are so many very good dishes awaiting the efforts of a young American housewife, that she need not go out of her way to extemporize or explore. The best cook-book for foreign dishes is still the old Francatelli.
The presence in our midst of Italian warehouses, adds an infinite resource to the housewife. Those stimulants to the appetite called hors d'œuvres, we call them relishes, are much increased by studying the list of Italian delicacies. Anchovy or caviar, potted meat, grated tongue, potted cheese, herring salad, the inevitable olive, and many other delicacies could be mentioned which aid digestion, and make the plainest table inexpensively luxurious. The Italians have all sorts of delicate vegetables preserved in bottles, mixed and ready for use in a jardinière dressing; also the best of cheeses, gargonzala, and of course the truffle, which they know how to cook so well.
The Italians have conquered the art of cooking in oil, so that you do not taste the oil. It is something to live for, to eat their fried things.
Speaking of the south of Europe reminds us of that wonderful bit of orientalism out of place, which is called Algiers, and which France has enamelled on her fabulous and many-coloured shield. Algiers has become not only a winter watering-place, high in favour with the traveller, but it is a great wine-growing country. The official statement of Lieut. Col. Sir R. L. Playfair, her Majesty's consul-general, may be read with interest, dated 1889:
"Viticulture in Algeria, was in 1778 in its infancy; now nearly one hundred and twenty-five thousand acres are under cultivation with vines, and during the last year about nine hundred thousand hectolitres of wine were produced. In 1873 Mr. Eyre Ledyard, an English cultivator of the vine in Algeria, bought the property of Chateau Hydra near Algiers. He found on it five acres of old and badly planted vineyards, which produced about seven hogsheads of wine. He has extended this vineyard and carried on his work with great intelligence and industry. He cultivates the following varieties: the Mourvedie, of a red colour resembling Burgundy, Cariguan, giving a wine good, dark, and rough, Alicante or Grenache, Petit Bouschet, Cabernot and Côt, a Burgundy, Perian Lyra, Aramen, and St. Saux.
Chasselas succeeds well; the grapes are exported to France for the table.
Clairette produces abundantly and makes a good dry wine. Ainin Kelb, more correctly Ain Kelb, dog's-eye, is an Arab grape which makes a good strong wine, but which requires keeping. Muscat is a capricious bearer. From the two last-named varieties, sweet as well as dry wines are produced by adding large quantities of alcohol to the juice of the grape, and thus preventing fermentation. The crops yield quantities varying from seven hundred gallons per acre in rich land to four hundred on the hillside, except Cariguan which yields more. Aramen yields as much, but the quality is inferior.
The red wines are sent to Bordeaux and Burgundy, to give strength and quality to the French clarets, as they are very useful for blending. The dry, white wine is rather stronger and fuller than that of France or Germany, and is much used to give additional value to the thinner qualities of Rhine wine.