'Salt, Sugar, MSG' Is a Great Cookbook for Mix-and-Match Meals

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Welcome to “Cookbook of the Week.” This is a series where I highlight cookbooks that are unique, easy to use, or just special to me. While finding a particular recipe online serves a quick purpose, flipping through a truly excellent cookbook has a magic all its own. 

I love cookbooks that combine comfort food with a smattering of unfamiliar recipes that make me think, “Ooh, I wonder what that's like.” This mingling of brand-new dishes with ones that stir a bit of nostalgia is usually a hit for me. This week, I chose Salt, Sugar, MSG to feature for my cookbook of the week. Not only does it tick those boxes above for this Asian-American kid, but this book is also a reliable resource for those dinners when you're in the mood for a little bit of everything.

About the book

Salt, Sugar, MSG is hot off the presses—it was published on March 18—and comes from chef Calvin Eng along with Phoebe Melnick. It may be Eng’s cookbook debut, but if you’ve ever tried his food at Win Son or Bonnie’s, you know that he is no flash-in-the-pan recipe developer. He’s been charming New Yorkers with interesting and bold flavors for some time—and there are many great examples of exactly that in Salt, Sugar, MSG. 

As you might guess from the title, this cookbook is not MSG-free. Quite the opposite actually: You’ll find MSG popping up here, there, and in unexpected places—kind of like how MSG and other glutamates naturally pop up in a lot of our food. Eng uses MSG like any other seasoning in this cookbook, because that’s exactly what it is: A cheap, easy, and harmless solution to boosting umami in your dishes, like Fuyu Cacio e Pepe Mein and MSG Caramel. 

Not only does the actual food benefit from the addition of monosodium glutamate, but I appreciate him using MSG in the title. It normalizes an ingredient and an entire community that once heavily suffered from the complete bullshit toxic myth of “Chinese restaurant syndrome.” Chef Eng has even teamed up with Ajinomoto to help dispel the myths surrounding MSG. If you’re just stretching your MSG wings, this cookbook offers plenty of opportunities for you to start getting your reps in.

A great cookbook for mix-and-match pairings

Throughout the book, in the headnotes and in chapter introductions, you’ll read anecdotes from Calvin Eng’s childhood and his current shopping habits in Chinatown. His stories about the smell of warm soy milk and shopping for vegetables reminded me of grocery shopping with my mom at our local Asian market in New Jersey. One of my favorite parts of that shopping trip was (and still is) the fresh bakery section.  

Everything in that area of the store had been freshly made that morning, and we’d pick up a little bit of everything. We’d grab congee, pork buns, soy milk, hot noodle dishes, vegetable stir fries, and armfuls of scallion pork floss buns. At home, my mom would unpack everything and we’d all snack and basically chow down on this kitchen table banquet. Salt, Sugar, MSG welcomes this mix-and-match style of eating. 

Many of the dishes in this book are satisfying as single snacks or parts of a greater meal. Somehow, they all seem like they’d pair well with each other. If you picked three recipes out of this book blindfolded, you’d likely have a well matched meal. To test that theory, I just did exactly that and here’s the menu I came up with: the Lemon Cola Chicken Wings, Perfect Pot of Steamed Rice, and Shrimp and Pork Wonton Soup. See? You need some vegetables? Same technique in the vegetable chapter—Hot Salad (romaine lettuce with a sweet and salty soy sauce dressing). Done.

While other cookbooks might give you a single recipe that includes the meat, veg, and carbs all together, Salt, Sugar, MSG gives you space to formulate the perfect meal for what you’re craving. This style of eating reflects how you might order at a dim sum restaurant or banquet hall—a plate of greens, a dish of steamed prawns or roast pork, steamed egg custard, and some rice. It’s actually a great cookbook for small appetites (just make a few plates for snacking) as well as for big family meals.  

The dish I made this week

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

I did my own version of mix and match for lunch this week with the Piggies in Scallion Milk Bread Blankets and Yeun Yeung (milk tea with coffee). I don’t much care for the average American hot dog on a bun, but dammit, if you change that bun to milk bread and add scallions, it’s a whole different ball game for me. 

The milk tea recipe, as simple as it is, was the first thing I decided on. It asks for orange pekoe tea, so I grabbed the Twinings Ceylon at my Shoprite and set up my boiling water, evaporated milk, and condensed milk. I was a little nervous that it would be too sweet (sometimes Thai iced tea overwhelms me) but it was perfectly creamy and sweet with a welcome bitter edge. I saved the rest for the morning so I could make the Bonus Recipe Yuen Yeung, which is just the addition of black coffee. 

The piggies were fantastic. I should have made all 12 like the recipe told me, but I turned the other half of the bread dough into a large milk bread loaf. (I was such a fool.) The milk bread recipe starts with a simple tangzhong (roux) which helps keep the bread dough soft and spongy. The sugar, egg, and butter enrich the dough and give the finished bun that perfect balance of richness along with the salt and umami from the hot dogs. Scallion hot dog buns and milk tea coffee—my new favorite lunch.

Where to buy it

Salt, Sugar, MSG is available as a hardcover, or as an e-book for a reasonable price. Since it’s brand new, you will definitely be seeing this one at the big box book shops and likely even at the local independent bookstores. Even if you don’t see it on their shelves, ask to see if they can order it to their location. 

Salt Sugar MSG: Recipes and Stories from a Cantonese American Home

$14.99 at Amazon

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$14.99 at Amazon

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