Packed lunch ideas from famous fictitious dishes

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/19/packed-lunch-ideas-famous-fictitious-dishes

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You might have seen designer Dinah Fried’s images of famous fictitious dishes, from the Swiss cheese and malted milk in The Catcher in the Rye, to the Scandi sandwiches of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. If you like thinking about food– and if you’re reading this, then you probably do – then you may agree that there’s often something comforting about fictional meals, whether visualised on the screen or imagined on the page (with the exception of Death Row Meals, perhaps), and they’re fun to try to make at home.

While it’s not possible to recreate everything (like the platter of self-replenishing chicken and ham sandwiches in Harry Potter for example), many of the following lunch ideas work quite well in real life.

Related: Why the Famous Five had the perfect austerity diet

• The most famous picnickers of all time were, of course, the Famous Five. In fact, they barely stop eating. To make your own smashing feast, hard-boil some eggs (7½ minutes in boiling water) and wrap up some salt and pepper in packets of tin foil to season them with. Put a selection of sliced cold meat (ham is fine if you don’t fancy tongue), crunchy radishes, lettuce leaves, a crusty roll and some butter in Tupperware. Don’t forget lashings of ginger beer. If you want to echo the rather more grown-up picnic Grace Kelly and Cary Grant enjoy in To Catch A Thief, you could add some cold leftover roast chicken too.

• We admire a luncher who knows their own mind, and Harriet the Spy was devoted to her tomato sandwiches on white bread with mayo. Take two slices of sourdough or other robust bread and toast ever so slightly. Leave to cool and wrap up. Bring a selection of ripe tomatoes and a mini jar of mayo to work. Spread it on the toast and top each slice with a mixture of different sliced tomatoes, sea salt and pepper. If you don’t fancy mayo, you could also rub the toast with half a garlic clove, before drizzling with olive oil, for more of a bruschetta.

• The crabmeat-stuffed avocado in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar may end up almost poisoning Esther, but the concept of avocado-stuffing is a blameless one. Make a modern, spicy prawn cocktail by combining small cooked prawns or brown shrimp, finely chopped cherry tomatoes, finely chopped red chilli, lime juice, a tiny splash of fish sauce, a pinch of sugar and some finely chopped coriander. Refrigerate and come lunchtime, cut a ripe avocado in half, remove the stone and spoon the prawn mix into the hollows.