There are days when you just don’t have time to make a good lunch. So here are some ideas for upgrading a simple, ready-made lunch with items you can find in the shops or at home.
These aren’t recipe suggestions, obviously, but rather quick additions to elevate ‘good’ to ‘darn good’. Your Mediterranean mixed salad may have one measly, insulting olive in it, but with these upgrades you might not even notice, or care.
• Soups really reap the benefits of being jazzed up. Adding a finishing topping to an already hot bowl or container, and introducing another flavour (and texture) is the way to go: try a teaspoon of pesto in a country vegetable soup; plain yoghurt and a squeeze of lemon in a lentil curry soup; lots (and we mean lots) of freshly ground black pepper and ready grated parmesan in a creamy tomato; crumbled up cheese-flavoured crackers in a minestrone; a crumbling of feta in anything bean based. If you are reheating the soup yourself you can bulk it up with extra veg, such as baby spinach or sliced cavolo nero: just add to the bowl before microwaving.
• Ready-made sandwiches often feel like they are missing just one extra thing to lift them and add another dimension. The result of margin-making, we suppose. So size up your sarnie in both taste and filling size with a single extra ingredient: stuff fresh basil into a ham baguette; add sliced cherry tomatoes to a classic tuna sandwich for sweetness; try scattering a spoonful of capers into a mayo-heavy chicken salad; slice ripe avocado into a BLT; jarred roasted peppers in a falafel wrap; a handful of bagged watercress or again, capers, in egg mayo. Or do what you did at school (maybe) and add a few crisps ... You know it makes sense.
• Shop-bought salads generally need their ‘luxury’ bits enhanced. Add extra protein and flavour in simpler tomato and lettuce salads in the form of parma ham, prawns or anchovies (and if you’ve mastered the art of the microwaved egg, one or two of those). Finally, for the strong flavour and tang chasers among you, there is a variety of jarred pickled veg at your disposal: cabbage, beetroot, cornichons, jalapenos, etc.
Caroline Craig and Sophie Missing are authors of The Little Book of Lunch (Square Peg)
