Mma Ramotswe’s Cookbook
By Stuart Brown with foreword by Alexander McCall Smith
Polygon @ £18.99
Review by
Patricia Cleveland-Peck
 Subtitled ‘nourishment for the traditionally built’, this volume by Stuart Brown is obviously aimed at the many fans of Alexander McCall Smith’s well-loved character, the eponymous owner of The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Writing a cook book around a fictional character is something unusual but even more so is basing one on the not very haute cuisine of sub-Saharan Africa.
Firstly I was struck by the excellent standard of production of this book. The paper is heavy and the pages come in subtly differing colours, the type is clear and the photographs of food, landscape and people are truly excellent.
So a lovely book - but does it work ? A quick look though reveals a number of puzzling ingredients. Sometimes substitutes are suggested and plenty of interesting information provided but water lily, ditloo beans and mopane worms are gong to be somewhat hard to source in rural Sussex. Closer inspection shows simple recipes ( cakes, stews, pumpkins etc) , for basic unadorned but authentic sounding dishes.
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Tempted by ‘the scent of roasting mealies’ we opted to make something traditional which was new to us - Mealie Bread. The resulting loaf, savory and crunchy was delicious. We’ll certainly make more. The instructions however, were a bit vague; the type of flour was not specified and we were told to cook the maize cobs but not whether to roast or boil.
To quibble however, is to miss the point for this book. It is far more than a cookery book – with its liberal quotations from the stories, its plant lists and explanations of Botswana life and its comments on the characters’ food preferences, it offers fans not only a stunning visual background to the well-loved series but also deepens their appreciation of it via their tastebuds.
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