Chinatown Crudités with Sour Cream and Green Onion Dip
a recipe from the excellent new book, SALT SUGAR MSG by Calvin Eng and Phoebe Melnick
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My book Tenderheart is available from Books are Magic, Kitchen, Arts and Letters, Book Larder, Bold Fork Books and also here or here.
This week’s recipe is for free for all subscribers.
This week, I was in London. I used the excuse of attending the Andre Simon Awards (where TENDERHEART was shortlisted amongst six other stellar books) to revisit my former home and to catch up with friends (I did not win, but congratulations to the much deserved winner SIFT by
). I ate extremely well. I had a glorious Sunday lunch at The Baring, a fun dinner at Jikoni and then lunch at Dishoom. There was post-awards martini and chips at the Fortnum’s Bar at the stunning The Royal Exchange, afternoon tea at Honey and Co, and excellent filtered coffee at Prufrock.As often happens when I’m away, after two days, I started to crave Chinese food, so I ventured to Chinatown. I stumbled upon a huge line outside Noodle Inn on Old Compton Street, which I soon learned is a viral-on-social-media restaurant serving hand pulled noodles. I’m not proud of it but I went against my usual mantra of “I never line up’ and joined the queue. The line moved slowly but surely, and after 30 or so minutes, I was granted a seat at the bar, with a birds eye view of the noodle masters slapping and pulling dough into shape. I ordered the regular biang biang noodles. The noodles themselves were extra wide and tantalizingly chewy, topped with crunchy soy bean sprouts and ample garlic, Sichuan pepper, cumin, and coriander. The sauce was a little on the too-sweet side for me but I am Cantonese and always prefer to stay on the extra-savoury side. Were they worth the wait? Well for me, yes, because on that particular day, I really needed to feed myself noodles. But were these better than other handpulled noodles? Probably not.
Speaking of being Cantonese and our cultural penchant for very savoury food, I am so pleased to talk about a new book that will be, in my opinion, one of the best cookbooks this year – Salt Sugar MSG by Calvin Eng with Phoebe Melnick. Calvin is the chef and owner at Bonnie’s, one of my favourite restaurants in New York. Calvin’s food tastes familiar and also completely new. One of my favourite dishes at the restaurant is the dao gok (Chinese long beans, also known as snake beans in Australia) tossed with a fermented tofu garlic butter and crispy yauh ja gwai (fried crullers), which tastes like a modern, cooler version of my mother’s dish that I grew up eating. Then there is his faultless fuyu cacio e pepe mein which harnesses the salty, funky edge of fermented tofu to create a Cantonese take on the Roman classic. In the book, there are updates to Canto home food, such as tinned dace dip (the accompanying photograph depicts it served in the tin!), Cantonese minestrone (which I call macaroni soup), steamed egg custard with vinegary, marinated tomatoes and congee arancini. Clearly Calvin is a master of savoury, but his food is not just Cantonese or even just Cantonese American. To me, his bold flavours and the courageous way he puts together traditional ingredients feels distinctly Brooklyn - old world meets new, a good Chinese boy (Bonnie’s is named after his mother, after all!) who is secretly a bit rock and roll.
I’m so excited to share a recipe from Salt Sugar MSG this week. If you too binge watched With Love, Meghan and now can’t get crudites out of your head, consider Calvin‘s Chinatown Crudités as the pinnacle of this culinary artform. It is impossible to stop eating this sour cream and green onion dip – it is SO savoury, so creamy, so addictive. Calvin spares nothing in the allium department – he uses onions, scallions, garlic AND onion powder. The vegetables are also slightly blanched which makes this snack feel like more of a meal. I love the twist of using using Chinatown vegetables too, with the flexibility to substitute with Western cauliflower, celery and green beans (which I did for my photo because I made this with what was in my fridge).
Thank you to Calvin Eng, Phoebe Melnick and Clarkson Potter for allowing me to share this recipe.
What to eat this week, lots of new recipes. All NYT Cooking recipes have gift links:
Monday: A new pasta recipe for shroom lovers, Lemony Roasted Mushroom Pasta
Tuesday: Sook Mei fan or Cantonese creamed corn rice.
Wednesday: Part chunky chowder, part saucy curry, Coconut Curry With Potatoes and Greens is another new recipe
Thursday: A caprese, but make it slow. Caprese salad with slow-roasted tomatoes, rocket and basil gremolata
Friday: Another new soup recipe to end the week, inspired by French onion soup, with the addition of white beans and gruyere croutons.
🥦 My cookbook, Tenderheart is for cooking vegetables, all year round. Pick up your copy here. It is also mostly vegan (or vegan-izable) and gluten-free adaptable.
Chinatown Crudités with Sour Cream and Green Onion Dip
© Recipe excerpted from Salt Sugar MSG, Copyright © 2025 by Calvin Eng and Phoebe Melnick. Photographs copyright © 2025 by Alex Lau Published by Clarkson Potter, an imprint of Crown Publishing Group, with permission by Hetty Lui McKinnon for To Vegetables, With Love.
In Calvin’s words: Cantonese people don’t eat a whole lot of cold, raw vegetables. We love our vegetables ripping hot—stir-fried or deep-fried, steamed or blanched. So I’ve never really liked a carrot stick or cucumber spear all that much. I do like a good dip, though. And a crunchy vegetable is a great way to shovel lots of dip into my body. You can play around with whatever vegetables happen to be in season for this crudites platter. But no matter what, definitely plate those veggies up with a few fistfuls of potato chips and a bowl of sour cream and green onion (also known as scallion) dip on the side.
In Hetty’s words: Calvin’s completely correct when he says “Cantonese people don’t eat a whole lot of cold, raw vegetables”. This is one of the reasons I like salads with so many cooked components. If you don’t have MSG, substitute with bouillon powder/paste.
Serves 4 to 6
Sour cream and green onion dip
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 small yellow onions, sliced
1 cup sour cream
½ cup Kewpie mayonnaise
¼ cup cream cheese, at room temperature
3 scallions, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 garlic clove, minced
½ tablespoon onion powder
1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt (or 3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt)
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
½ teaspoon MSG
Chinatown Crudités
6 cups water
kosher salt
½ pound (225g) dao gok, cut into 6-to 7-inch pieces with the stems removed, or string beans, left whole
½ pound (225g) Chinese cauliflower or Western cauliflower florets with stems
½ pound (225g) small rainbow carrots, halved lengthwise
¼ pound (110g) snap peas or snow peas
3 stalks Chinese celery or celery with leaves, cut into 6-inch pieces
2 cups potato chips
1. PREPARE THE SOUR CREAM AND GREEN ONION DIP: In a medium pot over medium-high heat, melt the butter. When the butter foams, add the onions and cook, stirring, until they begin to soften and brown, about 7 to 8 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium and continue to cook, stirring frequently, until the onions are deeply golden brown and smelling sweet, 20 to 25 minutes. Transfer the caramelized onions to a small bowl and set aside to cool to room temperature.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the sour cream, mayonnaise, cream cheese, scallions, lemon juice, garlic, onion powder, salt, pepper, and MSG and stir to mix well. Coarsely chop the cooled caramelized onions, add to the sour cream mixture, and mix well. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve. The dip will keep in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.
3. FOR THE CHINATOWN CRUDITÉS: In a medium pot, combine 6 cups of the water and a few big pinches of salt and bring to a rolling boil over high heat. While the water heats, prepare an ice bath in a large bowl with equal parts ice and water.
4. When the water is boiling, blanch the vegetables in batches: Blanch the dao gok and Chinese cauliflower together for 30 seconds, then, using a spider, immediately transfer them to the ice bath to stop the cooking. Blanch the carrots for 1 minute, then use the spider to transfer them to the ice bath to stop the cooking.
5. Remove the dao gok, cauliflower, and carrots from the ice bath and lay them on a kitchen towel to pat dry.
6. TO SERVE: Arrange the blanched dao gok, cauliflower, and carrots and the raw snap peas and celery on a serving plate. Accompany with bowls of the dip and the potato chips.
I am soooo excited for this book to arrive!!
He is definitely channeling French onion dip from my youth.