3 WFH meals you can whip up in 30 minutes or less

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SINGAPORE - With more people staying indoors or working from home during the pandemic, home cooking has picked up.

Not everyone has the time and energy to prepare meals from scratch daily or even regularly, though. Slaving over the stove is just not practical when you also have calls to make and deadlines to meet.

But there are work days when you want to give food delivery and takeaways a break and still make time for a quick lunch.

Here are three easy meals you can whip up without breaking a sweat.

 

1. Laksa

As much as I love cooking laksa, it can be time-consuming even when I use pre-mixed paste. It is also not practical to cook a whole pot of laksa gravy when you just want a bowl or two.

But with Prima Taste Singapore Laksa La Mian, you can have a bowl of piping hot laksa ready in just 10 minutes.

If you are not fussy about having the usual thick white beehoon, the paste and pre-mix that come with this laksa pack of noodles are pretty decent.

The noodles, which are non-fried, take seven minutes to cook, according to the instructions on the packaging. Each packet comes with two sachets - one containing laksa paste and the other, laksa pre-mix.

My only gripe is that Prima Taste should have packed in more paste.

The recommended amount of water to use for making the laksa gravy is 500ml. I use 600ml, but the noodles still soak up too much of the gravy.

The gravy is not spicy, so you can turn the heat up with sambal belacan chilli paste.

I cannot eat laksa without cockles, so I buy frozen cockle meat ($6 for a 600g pack from seafood seller Lim Yan Hwee Trading in Serangoon Central). After defrosting and discarding the packing liquid, I get about 80g of cockle meat - enough for two bowls of laksa.

Blanch the cockles if you like them well-cooked. I skip this step and add them directly into my bowl of laksa as the residual heat is enough to cook them partially.

You can also add fish cake or prawn.

If, like me, you have a laksa plant at home, snip off a few leaves and throw them into your bowl for that extra oomph.

 

Ingredients

• 1.2 litres water
• 2 packets Prima Taste Singapore Laksa La Mian
• 2 pieces tau pok or dried beancurd puff squares (30g), cut into nine pieces each
• 60g bean sprouts
• 1 piece fish cake (68g), sliced
• 80g cockle meat
• 6g laksa leaves, chopped
• 2 flat tsp Kwong Cheong Thye Sambal Belachan Chilli Paste

 

Method

1. Cook one packet of laksa at a time.

2. Bring 600ml of water to a boil.

3. Add the laksa paste and pre-mix that come with the noodles.

4. Add the noodles and cook for six minutes.

5. Add the tau pok and bean sprouts and cook for one minute.

6. Pour the mixture into a serving bowl.

7. Add half of the fish cake slices and cockle meat.

8. Garnish with half of the chopped laksa leaves.

9. Add the sambal belachan chilli paste.

10. Repeat the steps above to cook the second packet of laksa.

11. Serve hot.

Makes two servings

 

Source: The Straits Times © Singapore Press Holdings Limited. Reproduced with permission.

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