For any foodie, perhaps the greatest torture there is, is reading about some divine dish that you know you won’t ever get to eat. Whether it was Enid Blyton's hot, buttered scones with jam as a child or one of The Great Gatsby's epic feasts featuring everything from turkey to spiced baked hams as we got older, it's a problem literature-lovers have learned to stomach but now, a particularly innovative woman has finally come to our rescue.
Although it began as a modest project, as Dinah continued to read and cook she found herself sinking into the idea and wanting to keep adding to it. Her love affair with food fuelled her desire to recreate her favourite meal. ‘Many of my most vivid memories from books are of the meals the characters eat. I read Heidi more than twenty years ago, but I can still taste the golden, cheesy toast that her grandfather serves her, and I can still feel the anticipation and comfort she experiences as she watches him prepare it over the open fire.’ says Dinah She faced some problems as a vegetarian when it came to creating some of the more exotic meat dishes. The pig kidney from Ulysses was one of her bigger challenges. We’re very glad she kept at it though because the final product was a stunning tribute to the culinary beauties of fiction.
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND - “‘Have some wine,’ the March Hare said in an encouraging tone. Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea.”
FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS - “‘You goddamn honkies are all the same.’ By this time he’d opened a new bottle of tequila and was quaffing it down….He sliced the grapefruit into quarters...then into eighths...then sixteenths...then he began slashing aimlessly at the residue.”
OLIVER TWIST - “Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity: ‘Please, sir, I want some more.’”
THE BELL JAR - “Then I tackled the avocado and crabmeat salad...Every Sunday my grandfather used to bring me an avocado pear hidden at the bottom of his briefcase under six soiled shirts and the Sunday comic.”
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE - “When I’m out somewhere, I generally just eat a Swiss cheese sandwich and a malted milk. It isn’t much, but you get quite a lot of vitamins in the malted milk. H. V. Caulfield. Holden Vitamin Caulfield.”
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO - “She improvised bandages and covered the wound with a makeshift compress. Then she poured the coffee and handed him a sandwich. ‘I’m really not hungry,’ he said. ‘I don’t give a damn if you’re hungry. Just eat,’ Salander commanded, taking a big bite of her own cheese sandwich.”
THE GREAT GATSBY - “On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d’oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold.”
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD - “‘Gracious alive, Cal, what’s all this?’ He was staring at his breakfast plate. Calpurnia said, ‘Tom Robinson’s daddy sent you along this chicken this morning. I fixed it.’ ‘You tell him I’m proud to get it—bet they don’t have chicken for breakfast at the White House.’”
All Images Courtesy: fictitiousdishes.com
