Mma Ramotswe's Cookbook and other cookbooks of southern Africa

Peanut Biscuits

My latest book review for Lime is of Mma Ramotswe’s Cookbook: Nourishment for the traditionally built by Stuart Brown.  Here it is:

Whether you are into The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels or not, you will certainly enjoy the recipes in this sumptuous cookbook, and its glorious photographs of the food and people of Botswana. It celebrates the cherished food of Mma Precious Ramotswe and her friends and colleagues from the novels by Alexander McCall Smith.  Beautifully produced, the book starts delightfully with how Precious makes a cup of rooibos (redbush tea) and easy to make biscuits, and goes onto some amazing looking cakes.  There are delicious looking stews, curries and spicy chicken recipes, and for the more adventurous, a couple of options for the Batswana delicacy - Mopane worms - a caterpillar that can eaten fried or just plain boiled. You can, if you like, ignore the passages from the novels, as the summaries of how to prepare the food of Botswana and southern Africa, are well written and informative, but it would be a shame to skip these as they really do give a flavour of Mma Ramotswe’s world and the wonderful country that is Botswana.

I had a bit more to say about the book than the review space allowed. When I first heard about this book I thought what a tacky rip-off – they are just doing it to make money and it cannot possibly be any good. How wrong I was. The book bugged me, and because of this blog and the fact that few cookbooks pop up on it, since I started there has been only one other cookbook that I have listed, it was Levi Roots’ Caribbean Food Made Easy, it was a link-in publication to the BBC TV series that was screened last summer.  So I thought that I had better get hold of a copy of this ‘No. 1 Ladies’ spin off and take a look at it. How could I say that this blog is about the books and literature of Africa and its Diaspora and then ignore one on food? I have to also admit that I have been a pretty addictive collector of cookbooks and food memoirs over the years, but in recent times and, particularly with Mr Muse’s own growing addiction to the BBC food website I decided to ease up on my own cookbook purchases. And so Mma Ramotswe’s Cookbook became my first cookbook purchase for sometime.

There are two reasons for my change of heart about this book, one, is clear from the review, it is beautifully produced and the photographs are brilliant. The second reason, is that having read it, I feel that it is a book of a genuine love and admiration of the food and people of Botswana. It turns out that the author, Stuart Brown, has lived and worked in Botswana for many years, He knows the food well, and of course, he had the contacts to be able to pull the recipes together in a meaningful way. While, I have never read an Alexander McCall Smith – very happy to have only watched the film and TV series, I admire the fact that Stuart Brown has picked up the food references in the novels (14 in total) and turned them into this lovely book. From what I understand even McCall Smith himself seemed unaware of the amount of food that he’s included throughout the novels.

The strangest thing is that, it turns out this book is part of a sub genre of detective literary guides to eating and drinking. Other detectives that have books in this style include Donna Leon’s Venetian detective stories about Commissario Brunetti; Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta – has one called Food to Die For: Secrets of Scarpetta’s Kitchen, and there are even cookbooks about the food from the James Bond and Sherlock Holmes books. If you really want something to look forward to, not that I am suggesting he’s a detective – ( and note that I have not read any of these either) – The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook: From Cauldron Cakes to Knickerbocker Glory arrives later this year.

Back to Mma Ramotswe – you cannot really review a cookbook, without trying a trying a recipe. I decided on the Peanut biscuits. I am not much of a baker – so the practice is good for, and the idea of these biscuits with a nice cup tea, earl grey rather than redbush tea, appealed to me.  I’ll take a moment here, to say that I find the second part of the title of this book really annoying, I know that it follows on from the original books and presumably the lovers of the books don’t mind it, but I think that it is unnecessary.

The biscuits came out well – even if I do say so my self. I got about about 40 in total. Enjoy the pics.

1. The ingredients

2. Everything weighed out

Creaming the butter and sugar

4. Adding the eggs

5. Add the peanut butter

6. Getting ready to prepare the peanuts

7. Will shell them first next time.

8. Mixing in the peanuts

9. Just before some of them go into the oven

My other southern African cookbooks

Egoli Recipe Book compiled by Eduan Naude, Brian Shalkoff Gramadoelas Africa Restaurant

Photography Richard Cutler

Billed as Masterpieces of the Rainbow Cuisine of South Africa this is a series of recipes from the characters from the long running, but just ended, South African soap opera, Egoli. The characters who supply the recipes in the cookery book – all women - are a black South African – a Xhosa; a Muslim – of Malaysian heritage; an Indian Hindu, and an Afrikaans lady, who seems to be of French heritage, rather than Dutch, based on the recipes that appear in her name. The authors who have collected the recipes together and produced the book are the owners are of the restaurant Gramadoela, and rumour has it that this is Nelson Mandela’s favourite place to eat in Johannesburg. I am no expert, but it seems to that a fair number of the recipes included in this book were also in the Mma Ramotswe/Botswana book – but then maybe it is no surprise that as neighbouring nations the cuisines are similar.

I was tempted by the Ginger Preserve recipe first, but it took 10 days just to prepare the ginger; then the crocodile scampi caught my eye – but I thought I would struggle to get the 500g of cubed crocodile meat at Sainsbury’s, so I tried the Lemon Chicken, which was much more straight forward - it was delicious Sunday roast.

African Salad: a portrait of South Africans at home by

Stan Englebrecht and Tamsen de Beer

This is actually a photographic book, it sits on our photographic book shelves, but it was a gift to both Mr Muse and I, and so I include it here as a cookbook. Even though in reality it is not really a cookbook at all – it is as the title says a portrait of South Africans at home. The photographer and author visited people across South Africa and in their homes and asked them to talk about the favourite dishes, where as you can imagine stories of their lives emerged. The page spreads include a portrait of the person outside their home, a photograph of the recipe as they provided it in their own handwriting and in their own language, as well as the full text of how the dish is prepared. It is a beautiful book and gives a sense of the unity and separation of the food as it is really eaten in the rainbow nation. Clearly people eat very different things, but the nuances of race, wealth and class is displayed throughout the book even though everyone is on one level talking about the same thing. 

The recipe that broke my heart was for Baked bean salad.

Nomsebenzi Vinqi of Somerset East (180km from Port Elizabeth in Eastern Cape Province) gifted it to the collection, as as her weekly Sunday treat, that she eats after church. She lives in a tin-shack that she’s painted in the colour of her Zionist uniform, a pale shade of green. The door does not lock and she cannot afford a padlock and so she has a spray gun instead. Nosembenzi runs the community shop – its tiny, called Linge Lethu it means ‘Our Attempt.’ Her ambition is to open a bank account, expand her shop and have some children.

Baked bean salad

I tin of baked beans

2 tbsp mayonnaise

½ cup of cheese

½ green pepper

Grate the cheese and the green pepper. Place in a bowl and mix together with the can of baked beans and mayonnaise. 

The title of the book ‘African Salad’ is a reference to the one food that you find throughout the cuisines of Africa and the Caribbean. In South Africa it is known as Mealie-meal, Mealie pap, pap or porridge. In the book it pops up many times with the different names, and is also called Umphokogo in one of the African languages. Its other names throughout the world are as follows: coo coo, cornmeal, nsima, nshima, fufu, sadza, funchie, funjie, ugari, ugali, and the Italian’s know it as polenta. Sorry if I have missed the name by which you know it.