As a young boy, a favorite weekly trip came each Tuesday when mom would lead her twin sons to the “macaroni factory.” Holding hands, we’d make the 10-minute walk from home, past St. Agnes Church, to the old schoolhouse where pasta was produced by the ton.
Lowellians over the age of 30 can likely recall the Prince Spaghetti plant in Swede Village — and its Prince Grotto restaurant — which delivered years of gustatory joy to thousands.
The Providence macaroni factory of the 1960s wasn’t so grand, however. Still, to two, precocious 8-year-old boys, it was an adventure to run between the wooden boxes filled with macaroni and watch with wonder as men and women in white coats and hats pulled long strands of dough through our final result, a fettucine-style noodle hand-cranked rollers.
When my mother placed her order, a worker dug a large metal scoop into a fat bin of macaroni, and poured the contents onto a scale. Satisfied with the weight, he’d tip the scale and the macaroni slid off into white wrapping paper that covered a table. He’d fold it into a package, tie it with string, and mom would pay for it in nickels and dimes — not dollars — as is the case today.
By the time I was a teen-ager, the macaroni factory had fallen “victim” to a Providence housing renewal project. That was almost 50 years ago. (Lowell’s Prince plant survived until 1997.)
The factory’s memory was recently revived, however, when the Wine Goddess invited a few friends to our home to make pasta. The assembled group lacked little confidence, despite little experience. The lone veteran was Suzanne Dion, The Sun’s Lifestyle editor, who began kneading the dough the moment she eyed the kitchen and before I could offer her a glass of wine. The other members of Team Pasta — neighbors Helen Dunigan, Mike and Judy Pigeon — gave moral support.
Julia Child never passed up the chance to enjoy a little drink while cooking and we weren’t going to either. I passed around a bottle of Greco di Tufo, an aromatic Italian white wine made at Vintner’s Circle in Westford. The Wine Goddess served appetizers. Suzanne kept kneading the dough. I joined in, sinking my fingers deep into the wheat flower and thinking about Lucille Ball’s famously funny chocolate factory — and disaster.
We kept adding olive oil and a bit of water to the mix and the dough responded, finally, into a smooth, moist texture.
The goal was to make a fettucine-style noodle for the Wine Goddess’ asparagus/proscuitto white cream sauce. In addition, we had on hand a spinach spaghetti to be complemented by Suzanne’s chunky red Bolognese sauce. Dunigan provided a huge garden salad and the Pigeons brought vanilla and chocolate cannolis from Mike’s Pastries as well as thick-crusted Italian parmesan/proscuitto bread from Bricco, both in the North End.
I selected two special red wines: a 2007 Il Valentino Brunello di Montalcino and a 2008 Chianti Classico Riserva from the House of Antinori.
It took nearly an hour to make the dough from scratch, stretch it into gorgeous yellow strands of pasta, and cook it. It was worth every minute.
We ate both pastas. The Wine Goddess brought out two steaming platters and placed them on the table. The smell of the warm bread, mixed with the vapors from the red and white sauces, filled the room with flavors to be savored. I poured the wine, toasted the team, and urged all to mangia, mangia, mangia.
We ate, drank and talked for nearly three hours. Andrea Bocelli’s CD voice made a guest appearance. All agreed the home-made pasta tasted better than anything the world had ever produced in a box. The Brunello’s dusty, cherry and orange-peel sensations were on every palate, and the Chianti, though long gone, proved a worthy predecessor.
For one night the macaroni factory of my youth was magically reborn, and I did what I’ve learned to do best at these times: Thank the Wine Goddess and our four amici for the pleasure.
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