The Times has a fun story about a new recipe book which is supposedly written by Precious Ramotswe, the founder of Botswana’s The No1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and the creation of Scotland’s Alexander McCall Smith. A charity project, the book concentrates on the Botswanan cakes and bakes which are said to have given Mma Ramotswe her famously fuller figure.
Maybe it’s just the books I read but I can’t come up with too many fictitious characters on which to base good cookbooks. Every recipe in a cookbook inspired by Irvine Welsh characters would begin with the instruction ‘First heat your spoon . . .’
Similarly, Sherlock Holmes taste for rough shag and cocaine may have helped him solve some of his trickier cases but they don’t make for a balanced diet.
A Homer Goodall has already written a recipe book based on bon viveur James Bond but it is now out of print. I’m not hugely surprised. Very briefly in the Nineties, there was a magazine called Eat Soup which was a lifestyle/foodie magazine for the Loaded generation. In one of its first articles, a writer tried to follow Bond’s eating and drinking habits as detailed in, I think, Casino Royale. If memory serves, the brave scribbler didn’t get beyond the first chapter before succumbing to heartburn, nausea and a vicious hangover. Best stick to Ramotswe’s buns.
