It’s safe to say that almost everyone tried their hand at cooking during this circuit breaker period, including Qi Yuwu. But he’s hardly a novice in the kitchen — the avid home cook is known for whipping up dishes (like a delish cherries jubilee he made for his 8 Days magazine cover story a decade ago). Recently, he and wife Joanne Peh are also sequestering at home with their two kids due to Covid-19. The busy Yuwu has been making use of his rare free time by cooking up a storm. The couple document one such kitchen sesh in a series of Instagram Stories (on @qiyuwu and @joannepeh), giving us a glimpse of life in the Qi household.

“I’ve some free time, so I’m doing something that I’ve never done before — making roast pork,” declares Yuwu in Cantonese in his IG video. “I’ve done all the preparation the night before for two styles [of roast pork belly], Asian and Western. I don’t know how it will turn out. I’ll tell you later.”

His camera then pans over two gigantic slabs of raw pork belly in foil-lined trays, waiting to be placed in the oven. Ooh, promising.

“He actually made two types — a Cantonese-style [siu yuk] and Western-style [roast pork belly]. Let’s take a look at what happened to the Western-style one,” teases Joanne on her IG.

According to Yuwu’s subsequent IG story, his Western-style roast pork belly — cooked using a Jamie Oliver recipe — didn’t, er, turn out as expected. “I failed at [making both] the roast pork, ’cos the skin was not crispy [sad face emoji]. Roast pork skin is the most important. Besides that, the taste is quite good,” he tells 8days.sg when we contact him via WhatsApp.

“It’s not the best. Okay lah,” he mutters critically after munching on a piece of siu yuk in a video captured by Joanne. The Qis conclude that it’s possibly ’cos of their rogue oven. “My oven is not good. The temperature is not high [enough] or even. Maybe next time I’ll use the fan mode,” muses Yuwu to us. On her IG, Joanne hypothesizes: “Apparently you need 250 degrees [Celsius] to 300 degrees to get it to be really crispy. Some parts of it are really crispy and some parts are not, so I don’t know. I’m not really good at this, so if you have any idea why the skin is not crispy, please let us know!”

A disappointed Yuwu mock cries over his non-crispy siu yuk. We’ve been there, 715, we’ve been there.

He also laments his under-performing roast pork. “Why are you only partially crispy? Are you fooling me? Oven, if you can’t get hot enough just say so! You’ve wasted my piece of pork.”

Although she’s “not a fan of roast pork belly”, Joanne avers, “I have to say the flavour is really good.” And luckily for her taste buds, Yuwu is planning to refine his roast pork belly recipe. He shares, “I will try to make it again. I would like to share [the recipe] with people when I succeed, okay?”

Other than roast pork belly, he also dished up a versatile range of homely nosh during circuit breaker, which he Instagrammed. Can we please go makan at your place next time, Yuwu and Joanne?