In the beginning of the Circuit Breaker period in Singapore, food delivery services were in a chaos because of sudden surge in demand, and all eating places are either closed or only offer takeaway services. So we have to become home-cooks overnight.

Chinese

Mapo tofu 麻婆豆腐

I confess, I used some “help” with this mapo tofu. But the whole idea is to use as little steps as possible to get to these dishes, so I recommend some help if you can. The “help” comes in the form of a sachet of premix mapo tofu sauce. There are several brands, but the best so far I have tried came from Japan. Marumiya 丸美物 Mabo Tofu No Moto is really easy to use, comes in two little sachet so that you can do a smaller portion. And this particular brand comes with meat sauce, so if you did not prepare minced meat, you are still OK. No sweat!

Drunken chicken roll 醉鸡卷

This is a new recipe I picked up from the sous vide user group. The chicken has been marinated using Shaoxing wine overnight in a vacuum bag. The chicken is then sous vide for 6 hours and chilled overnight. Total prep time: 2 days. But it is really easy to prepare with little risk of failure.

Sweet and sour soup 酸辣汤

This is in the style of Din Tai Fung’s sweet and sour soup. There’s one missing main ingredient from DTF – duck blood tofu 鸭血. And the bamboo shoot I used are from China and are not as sweet or crunchy.