1. Chinese chicken salad

Tear leftover roast chicken into bite-sized pieces, and mix with salad leaves. Make a dressing to taste from light soy sauce and chilli oil, a dash of black rice vinegar or balsamic, a little sugar to taste and a smidgeon of toasted sesame oil; dilute with a little chicken stock if you have it. Pour over the chicken and toss like a salad. Sometimes I add crushed garlic or ground roasted Sichuan pepper.

2. Egg-fried rice from leftovers

Heat a wok with a little groundnut oil, and add a couple of beaten eggs, swirling them around the base of the wok. When they are half cooked but still runny on top, add cold, cooked rice and stir-fry vigorously, breaking up the clumps of rice with your wok scoop or ladle and seasoning with soy sauce, salt and pepper to taste. Continue to stir-fry until the rice is very hot and smells wonderful. Finally, add a handful of finely sliced spring onion greens and stir a few times until you can smell them; then serve. Add anything you like to the basic recipe: frozen peas (blanched in hot water); leftover roast pork, finely chopped; cooked shrimps (make sure you heat these through though).

3. Use sachets of miso soup

When I don't have the time to make a proper Chinese soup, I use sachets of organic miso soup, which simply need boiling water. A bowl of steamed rice, a dish or two of leftovers (last night's stew; stir-fried spinach, reheated) and a bowl of miso soup make a wonderful quick and easy meal.

4. Midnight noodles

One of my favourite emergency late-night snacks is dried Chinese noodles (the flat flour-and-water kind). I boil, drain and then season them with tamari soy sauce, a little black rice vinegar, lots of chilli oil, and a tiny dash of toasted sesame oil, mixing everything together well. I might add some Chinese sesame paste or tahini, and some finely sliced spring onion greens. I usually top the noodles with an egg, fried on both sides.

5. Stir-fried cabbage

One of the easiest vegetables to stir-fry is Chinese leaf cabbage. Two methods: 1) heat oil in a wok, add a couple of dried chillies (cut into sections, deseeded) and a teaspoon of whole Sichuan pepper. Sizzle until the chillies are darkening but not burnt, then add sliced Chinese cabbage and stir-fry until succulent but still a little crisp. Salt to taste. 2) Stir-fry your sliced cabbage in a little oil and, when it is nearly done, push it to the side of the wok, tip a tablespoonful or two of oyster sauce into the space and stir it until it is hot. Then mix the sauce with the cabbage and stir-fry until cooked.

6. Another quick stir-fry

Smoked bean curd is delicious stir-fried with celery. Cut both into strips the same length. Heat a little oil in a wok over a high flame, and fry the bean curd until a little golden. Set aside. Return the wok to the heat with a little more oil. Add the celery, with some fresh or dried chilli to taste, and stir-fry until hot and juicy but still crunchy. Add the bean curd and season with salt and soy sauce to taste. Turn off the heat, stir in a teaspoonful of toasted sesame oil and serve.

· Fuchsia Dunlop's new book, Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China, will be published by Ebury (£16.99) on 6 March