KEEPING HOUSE IN PERSIA

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 201, 3 December 1910, Page 10

KEEPING HOUSE IN PERSIA

NATIVE COOKERY. Housekeeping in Persia is a more difficult undertaking than in western countries. The chief reasons for this are the lack of conveniences, and the fact that many things which in other countries can be bought ready for use must be prepared by the Persian housekeeper. You must buy your wheat, clean and sift it, and send it to the miller, who lives perhaps a day's journey from you. You must send with the wheat the most trusty servant you have, who will watch the miller day and night to see that he does not take too much toil. You ought, of course, send a second servant to watch the first, but if you began that there would be no end to the number , you would have to #end. Loaf sugar, granulated sugar, powdered sugar—you cannot buy them. What you can buy is a cone of sugar, about 10 inches in diameter and 13 inches in height, which comes from Russia or France. If you want lumps of sugar for your coffee and tea this cone of sugar must be placed on the solid floor and by means of a strong knife and a hammer broken to pieces. If you want fine sugar these pieces must be then ground with a mortair and pestle. If you wish powdered sugar, the fine sugar must be sifted several times l . Even in the kitchen of a European, where a table will be found, the cutting and pounding of the sugar must be done on the solid earthen floor. It is merely a row of hollow boxes made of sun-dried bricks in which is built a charcoal fire. Over these boxes are placed strips of iron on which the kettle rests. Native cookery does not include many things that are baked, but if you, an eccentric foreigner, demand a cake or pie your ingenious cook will be equal to the occasion. He will prepare beds of glowing coals in two of the boxes. Over one of these he will place the article to be baked. This he will cover with a copper pan and on- top of the pan he will place hot coals. The object of the coals in the second box is that the cook may be able to renew the fire in the first box without putting on fresh coals, which might smoke. Boxes are of earthenware. The bowls are small and shallow. The washerwoman has no bench on which to place the bowl and no board on which to rub her clothes. Squatted on her heels, with the bowl on the floor, she wears out her hands and the clothes too at a marvellous rate. It" looks rather primitive to see a woman sitting beside a watercourse pounding clothes with a stone, but I am not sure that this method, which is universally employed by the poorer people, is not to be preferred to the other.