salt sugar msg by calvin eng with phoebe melnick
an evolution of cantonese american cooking
Salt, sugar, and MSG are the holy trinity of Cantonese cooking and the title of the first cookbook by Calvin Eng and his wife Phoebe Melnick. Eng is the chef and owner of Bonnie’s, a Cantonese American restaurant in Williamsburg. He graduated from culinary school and in 2016 worked at Nom Wah Tea Parlor, helping to open their first fast casual location. In 2018, he joined the team at Win Son and in 2021 opened Bonnie’s in North Williamsburg.
Bonnie’s is named after his mother’s American name given to her by his aunt when they first moved from New York City from Hong Kong. Ironically, the food at Bonnie’s and within Salt Sugar MSG is ~not your mother’s~, fun and unexpected yet makes so much sense. Take the Char Siu McRib (not in the book but recipe here). The Cantonese diaspora is obsessed with McD’s. My grandparents took me to McDonald’s as a naughty treat and to this day my Dad must get the seasonal McRib every time it’s back. It’s is an ingenious invention, as are many of the recipes within the book like the BLT fried rice, tinned dace dip, congee arancini, and fuyu cacio e pepe mein.
I’ve been to Bonnie’s a few times and conceptually, their menu is exactly what I crave when dining out — Cantonese (my comfort food) with creative twists. That said, the food was a little salty for my preferences (as is most restaurant food). Luckily for me, this makes the cookbook the ideal way for me to try more of the food at Bonnie’s as I can adjust everything to my liking!
About the Book
Salt Sugar MSG contains 80+ recipes and is sectioned into 8 self-explanatory chapters: Breakfast, Snacks, Vegetables, Rice, Noodles, Meats, Seafood, and Sweets. Each chapter has a combination of classic Cantonese dishes and recipes that are more Cantonese-American fusion.
It’s also worth noting that several but not all of the recipes from Bonnie’s menu are contained within the book:
Tinned dace dip (pg. 85)
Yauh ja gwai panzanella (pg. 110)
Dao gok with fermented bean curd garlic butter and yauh ja gwai (pg. 117)
Ginger congee (pg. 143)
Fuyu cacio e pepe mein (pg. 162)
Shrimp and pork wontons in a peanuty chili sauce (pg. 172)
XO cheung fun (pg. 176)
Hup to ha (walnut shrimp) (pg. 228)
Salty, malty hot fudge sundae (pg. 251)
How I “Test” a Book
As a reminder, this is how I review a cookbook…First, I’ll do an initial read of the introduction, then flip through the recipes back to front. Next, I take a pad of sticky notes and use the title and visuals to tag recipes I’m interested in cooking or baking. Finally, I read the full selected recipes and cook. My goal is to make at least 10 recipes and hit at least one from each chapter if I’m feeling ambitious. For this book, I cooked a total of 14 recipes over two months.
In full disclosure, I received this book from the publisher!