Madeleine Roux: Moveable feast
James Bond may be as as old as bri-nylon, but he is still the stuff of fantasy. So say the latest press releases about this old chauv and his three squeezes, who are appearing in yet another Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies. Suspecting an end to our long suspension of disbelief in the decades-old Jamesian adventures coated in 1990s tech, publicists are now trotting out true quotes about agent 007 as written by Ian Fleming.
Not a good move. Thirty years ago, after avidly reading every James Bond paperback, I also spent nights longing for the Bondian cruel mouth and comma of black hair. That was before I first had sex. When I wised up, not only did old James seem suspect as far as women went (her bottom as firm as a young boys its right there, in Dr No), but he revealed awful taste in food.
After the obligatory martini (with enough gin to numb the maw) our James gets the munchies and presses down lots of Beluga caviar on toast. I suspect he was after something salty anchovy paste would have done as well. Grilled sole, that fish of choice for people who hate fish, because it tastes of nothing, comes next, with exciting escalope of veal to follow. Or steak and chips.
For lunch, James Bond of Her Majestys Secret Service is passionately fond of … a ham sandwich. Yes, with plenty of mustard. These boring culinary revelations take up a lot of space alongside pictures of Mr Bond holding a gun or driving a skiboat with a squeeze modelling astride. They never show him chewing steak and chips. It all underlines the sadness of Fleming fantasising about spies, sadism and cruel mouths while desperately trying to create some glamour in the food and living department.
Do we know anything at all about the furniture in James Bonds flat? Of course it was left to the Bond girls to cook some chic thing like barnaise sauce, tricky to make. Tie on your velvet throat ribbon and have a go:
Barnaise sauce (for four tournedos steaks). Simmer four tablespoons white wine vinegar and four tablespoons dry vermouth with one tablespoon chopped spring onions, five fresh tarragon leaves, three cracked peppercorns and a pinch of salt until liquid has reduced to two tablespoons. Cool and strain liquid.
Beat three egg yolks in a small heavy- bottomed saucepan until thick. Beat liquid into eggs in small spoonfuls. Add half a tablespoon cold butter and place pan over moderate heat. Stir constantly with a whisk until foamy and remove from heat. Beat in another half tablespoon cold butter.
Add another 200g butter in gobs, beating all the time over heat until the sauce has thickened. Remove from heat, stir in more salt or pepper to taste and spoon over rare steaks. Botch this sauce over too high heat, and it turns into scrambled egg. Not that our James will mind he likes it on toast, with bacon.