Salt Sugar MSG

Introduction

This is not a Cantonese cookbook. Not in the traditional sense, at least.

I grew up surrounded by a family chitchatting in a seamless mix of Toisanese and English, with bits of Cantonese scattered throughout, never speaking in the same language for more than a few words. Honestly, my Toisanese has always been significantly better than my Cantonese. It’s a dying dialect that often wins me an extra egg tart from the ladies behind the counter at my favorite bakery—a hint of street cred with the old crowd—a slow, sneaky smile. They aren’t used to hearing anyone under the age of fifty speak it. But everyone in my family does. It’s the dialect of Toisan, a county in the Guangdong Province in southeast China—the place where both sides of my family originated.

My mom was barely thirteen years old when she immigrated to New York with her sister and brother. She met her dad for the very first time when they landed in the city. He had moved to Manhattan’s Chinatown in the hope that one day the whole family would be able to join him before she was even born. It took a bit longer than anyone had anticipated, but my mom, her parents, and her two siblings settled into a one-bedroom apartment on the center of Bayard Street at the heart of the neighborhood. It was impossibly tiny; a clawfoot bathtub filled the middle of the kitchen and a broken oven stood in the corner, serving only as extra storage. My mom and her sister slept in a bunk bed, a somewhat sturdy contraption my grandfather pulled together to squish as many people as possible into one bedroom. Her brother slept in the kitchen on a pull-out cot that was tucked away the second his eyes opened each morning. Anything to keep the family together under one roof. My grandparents stayed in that place for over fifty years. They made Chinatown their home.

My mom lived on Bayard Street until she met my father when she was twenty-four. Almost a decade after moving to the States. When they married, he whisked her away to south Brooklyn, to the neighborhood his family now lived in after moving from those same tiny villages in southern China her family had once called home. But weekend after weekend, she dutifully and diligently returned to Chinatown. She dropped in to run errands for my grandparents and bring them groceries, to take them to doctors’ appointments and occasionally out to lunch. For years, she took my older sister around the neighborhood with her, and eventually, when I was old enough, she dragged me along too. I’d sit curled up on the couch, coloring on pads of paper while my mom, aunt, and grandma caught up on the weekly gossip. More often than not, though, they spent those hours sitting in silence, enjoying their time together again under the same roof.

It’s embarrassing to admit now, but I hated that apartment when I was younger. That space and those blocks felt like the physical representation of everything that made me different, a constant reminder of my not-so-traditional American upbringing. Different from the kids at school whose moms packed them buttered noodles and peanut butter and jelly for lunch. Now I desperately miss it all. The space where I learned to play mahjong with my grandma on the tiny foldout table. The kitchen I snacked on fresh rice rolls stuffed with slivers of marinated steak drenched in sweet soy with my grandfather and fried bow ties dripping in a sticky honey syrup with my aunt. The early weekend mornings I chased my mom up and down and all around Chinatown while she grocery shopped, navigating the sidewalks cluttered with fruit stalls as she dodged aunties who lugged their rolling-book-bags-turned-shopping-carts with ease. The neighborhood lined with restaurants we packed into weekend after weekend, celebrating birthdays and weddings, new lives and those who were no longer with us. Celebrating each other. Celebrating family.

That’s the funny thing about growing up. Sometimes you never truly understand how lucky and full your life is until you get a little older—until you have a little distance. I was so envious of those “more American” kids for years, practically up until I hit my twenties. By then, I had graduated from culinary school and taken a job at a restaurant on the edge of Chinatown. Suddenly I found myself hand-shopping for fresh vegetables and jars of condiments the way my mom had taught me years before, speaking Toisanese in the shops I had grown up frequenting, strolling down the blocks my grandparents had once roamed daily. Now, I walked those streets for inspiration rather than obligation, for appreciation rather than resentment.

A few years later, that same inspiration morphed into something more concrete: a restaurant—my restaurant, which I named Bonnie’s in honor of the American name my aunt chose for my mom when they first moved to New York City from Hong Kong. A restaurant for kids who grew up a little confused about their identities and where they fit into the world, like me. A restaurant for kids who are now proud of their heritage, like me. A restaurant dedicated to my Cantonese roots and my American upbringing.

And a year or so later, that same appreciation morphed into something more: a cookbook—this cookbook, stuffed with recipes that are deeply rooted in classic Cantonese flavors. Subtle, savory sauces and salty, preserved bites. Steaming trays of fresh fresh seafood served alongside bowls of fluffy jasmine rice. Salt, sugar, MSG and ginger, garlic, scallion.

A book filled with techniques—stir-frying and steaming, velveting meats and sizzling hot oils—from the conventional Cantonese kitchen. A book packed with dishes influenced by more than just my mom’s kitchen in Brooklyn and the roast meat shops lining the blocks of Chinatown, the banquet halls and dim sum parlors—dishes that dip into the melting pot that is New York City.

Each recipe in this book serves a purpose, from highlighting an essential Cantonese technique to expanding on a flavor or ingredient. Some of the cooking stays relatively true to the classics, minus a few tweaks here and there. The Sizzling Steamed Fish with Seasoned Soy Sauce (page 218) is practically the textbook definition of homey Cantonese cooking. A whole fish, tossed in a tray with a few slivers of ginger and then lightly steamed, finished with a hit of seasoned soy and a drizzle of sizzling hot oil to caramelize the fresh ginger and scallions scattered over top. This was a dish my mom made twice if not three times a week—a weeknight staple from my childhood that still excites and inspires me, that I crave and think about on the regular.

Other recipes don’t look especially Cantonese but certainly taste that way. Take the recipe for BLT Fried Rice (page 140). Heavily inspired by a regular old BLT, this fried rice really is an amalgamation of Cantonese and American flavors and techniques. Chunks of smoky, thick-cut American bacon stud this ultra-classic Cantonese-style fried rice. Seasoned simply with salt, sugar, and MSG and plumped up in the leftover bacon grease, the glistening grains of rice are the star of the show. There’s no drizzle of soy sauce to stain the rice at the end. Instead it’s finished with just a handful of shredded lettuce and some juicy, fresh, acidic tomatoes, and a squeeze of Kewpie mayo to tie it all together. It’s a true mishmash of identities—kind of like me. I’m not cooking with Cantonese flavors as some sort of gimmick. I’ve always thought of my cooking as a natural evolution from the food I grew up eating: a little bit of Americana mixed into Cantonese classics along with a heavy dash of nostalgia.

As a result, Salt Sugar MSG could never be a traditional Cantonese cookbook.

It always had to be Cantonese American.