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Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook
ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE Los Angeles Times, Food & Wine
A modern, brashly flavorful guide to cooking Taiwanese American food, from Josh Ku and Trigg Brown—co-owners of Brooklyn’s lauded Win Son Bakery—and Cathy Erway, celebrated James Beard Award-winning writer and expert on the cuisine.
Josh Ku, born in Queens to parents from southern Taiwan, and Trigg Brown, a native Virginian whose mentor was a Taiwanese-American chef, forged a friendship over food—specifically, excellent tsang ying tou, or “flies’ head,” a dish of chopped budding chives kissed with pork fat. Their obsession with Taiwanese food and culture propelled them to open Win Son together in 2016. The East Williamsburg restaurant quickly established itself as a destination and often incurs long waits for their vibrant and flavorful Taiwanese American cuisine. With 100 creative yet accessible recipes, this book will unravel the history of this diaspora cuisine. While featuring classic dishes and well-known favorites, this cookbook also stretches this cuisine’s definition, introducing new dishes with brazen twists that are fun, flavorful, and decidedly American-born in style. Including recipes such
Fried Eggplant with Black Vinegar, Labneh, and Spiced Cashews
Grilled Shrimp with Chili Butter and Cilantro
Black Sesame Noodles with Mushrooms
Big Chicken Buns with Fu Ru Mayo, Cilantro, and Scallions
Pei’s White Mapo Tofu
Ku and Brown have teamed up with Cathy Erway, Taiwanese food expert and celebrated writer, to create Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook which explores and celebrates the cuisine of Taiwan and its ever-simmering pot of creative influences. Told through the eyes, taste buds, travels, and busy lives of Ku, Brown, and Erway, this book brings the cuisine of this misunderstood island nation into the spotlight.
Includes color photographs
A modern, brashly flavorful guide to cooking Taiwanese American food, from Josh Ku and Trigg Brown—co-owners of Brooklyn’s lauded Win Son Bakery—and Cathy Erway, celebrated James Beard Award-winning writer and expert on the cuisine.
Josh Ku, born in Queens to parents from southern Taiwan, and Trigg Brown, a native Virginian whose mentor was a Taiwanese-American chef, forged a friendship over food—specifically, excellent tsang ying tou, or “flies’ head,” a dish of chopped budding chives kissed with pork fat. Their obsession with Taiwanese food and culture propelled them to open Win Son together in 2016. The East Williamsburg restaurant quickly established itself as a destination and often incurs long waits for their vibrant and flavorful Taiwanese American cuisine. With 100 creative yet accessible recipes, this book will unravel the history of this diaspora cuisine. While featuring classic dishes and well-known favorites, this cookbook also stretches this cuisine’s definition, introducing new dishes with brazen twists that are fun, flavorful, and decidedly American-born in style. Including recipes such
Fried Eggplant with Black Vinegar, Labneh, and Spiced Cashews
Grilled Shrimp with Chili Butter and Cilantro
Black Sesame Noodles with Mushrooms
Big Chicken Buns with Fu Ru Mayo, Cilantro, and Scallions
Pei’s White Mapo Tofu
Ku and Brown have teamed up with Cathy Erway, Taiwanese food expert and celebrated writer, to create Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook which explores and celebrates the cuisine of Taiwan and its ever-simmering pot of creative influences. Told through the eyes, taste buds, travels, and busy lives of Ku, Brown, and Erway, this book brings the cuisine of this misunderstood island nation into the spotlight.
Includes color photographs
272 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 24, 2023
63 people are currently reading
210 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 10, 2023
If you are seeking to recreate the dishes served at the Win Son restaurant or bakery, then you will enjoy this book. Otherwise, while the recipes in this cookbook use lots of Asian ingredients and are Taiwanese-ish in nature, they tend to be complicated with lots of steps. If you are seeking pure Taiwanese recipes, this is not a book for you but if Taiwan-American fusion cooking is your jam, it's worth a look.
There are color pictures of the finished dish for most of the recipes but not all. Curiously, the ones that sounded like they would be the most interesting to see, like the Purple Sweet Potato Grilled Cheese Dumplings that describes the dough turning neon-orchid, were not included.
The book also incorporates several brief transcripts of conversations with various individuals connected in some way to Taiwanese food. The introduction explains the intent behind the inclusion of these interviews but they were not well executed. These sections felt superfluous and a bit pretentious, and actually detracted from the book.
There are color pictures of the finished dish for most of the recipes but not all. Curiously, the ones that sounded like they would be the most interesting to see, like the Purple Sweet Potato Grilled Cheese Dumplings that describes the dough turning neon-orchid, were not included.
The book also incorporates several brief transcripts of conversations with various individuals connected in some way to Taiwanese food. The introduction explains the intent behind the inclusion of these interviews but they were not well executed. These sections felt superfluous and a bit pretentious, and actually detracted from the book.
February 16, 2023
The one thing that I really enjoy about being a part of the Abrams Dinner Party is being exposed to new cuisines. While I am somewhat of an adventurous eater, there are some areas that I have never tried. Taiwanese food is one of those. I guess you could say that I was intimidated by the potentially crazy ingredients (well, for this southern gal anyway), and would my family be open to trying new things?
I picked up this cookbook and started reading. Usually, I don't read much outside of the recipes and notes for those dishes. However, I read the Prologue this time, drawing me into the cuisine and what might be possible. I enjoyed the information from the chefs, how they created their restaurant and the various dishes they serve.
With a more open mind, I started flipping through the different sections and perusing the recipes. The photos are gorgeous and showcase the various dishes quite well.
The recipes cover a wide variety of palates and range from vegetarian to those for the meat lover. I like how there is a blend of Taiwanese and American, sort of a fusion but not quite.
I have earmarked a few recipes I want to try once I figure out where to get some of the specialty items. There is a large Asian community in my town, and I will have to venture over to one of their markets to see what they have to offer. I think these will have to be dishes I prepare when I can set aside a fair amount of time since it is not something I am used to preparing. It's a learning curve!
Peppered throughout the book are also conversations with the chefs about the food and how it has impacted their lives. It makes for fascinating reading.
If you are a Taiwanese food fan or want to learn how to make some, check out this cookbook. Please note that the cookie recipe is slightly off, so don't start with that one!
I picked up this cookbook and started reading. Usually, I don't read much outside of the recipes and notes for those dishes. However, I read the Prologue this time, drawing me into the cuisine and what might be possible. I enjoyed the information from the chefs, how they created their restaurant and the various dishes they serve.
With a more open mind, I started flipping through the different sections and perusing the recipes. The photos are gorgeous and showcase the various dishes quite well.
The recipes cover a wide variety of palates and range from vegetarian to those for the meat lover. I like how there is a blend of Taiwanese and American, sort of a fusion but not quite.
I have earmarked a few recipes I want to try once I figure out where to get some of the specialty items. There is a large Asian community in my town, and I will have to venture over to one of their markets to see what they have to offer. I think these will have to be dishes I prepare when I can set aside a fair amount of time since it is not something I am used to preparing. It's a learning curve!
Peppered throughout the book are also conversations with the chefs about the food and how it has impacted their lives. It makes for fascinating reading.
If you are a Taiwanese food fan or want to learn how to make some, check out this cookbook. Please note that the cookie recipe is slightly off, so don't start with that one!
October 16, 2023
Cult Flav
Sarah
7.2
In comparison to how often Taiwan is discussed in the US, its cuisines feel dramatically under-represented in the restaurant market, let alone the cookbook market. In fact, we hadn't even experienced it until we moved to LA in 2022 at which point, we promptly fell in love with it.
As with many previously-colonized countries, it merges many culinary traditions into a unique new set of flavor profiles. Those very clearly visible culinary influences definitely make this food more approachable to more people. The base is very similar to many Chinese regional cuisines that lean into a couple primary flavors — here, sugar-y sweetness and rich savoriness — but with a few western ingredients tucked in from its time as a Dutch colony and clear Japanese influence tucked in for good measure.
The Win Son crew and their co-author, Cathy Erway, do a fantastic job of bringing all of these details to the forefront. You can really feel their love for Taiwan, its food, and its cultural history throughout the book. The presentation is thoughtful and strikes a great balance between a focus on community and feeling deeply personal at the same time.
The only weakness we really found was inconsistency — and that's something that has been true across many books produced by chefs and restaurateurs. Measurements didn't always match between volume and weight, times were consistently underestimated, and instructions for the same process were often very detailed in one recipe only to be under-detailed in other recipes.
This is a completely feasible problem to work around as long as you understand how to read your ingredients and troubleshoot the issues. Several of them, we knew how to solve instinctively, but since we always have to follow the book to the letter for reviews, our hands were tied and that made the exercise much more frustrating. Which is all to say that some recipes will be very frustrating for people without a ton of cooking experience — especially the breads/donuts, which we would just recommend you skip if you aren't intimately familiar with methods of developing gluten, proofing, and deep frying.
None of that changes that this book will have a long, useful life on our bookshelf. We've already learned tons of new-to-us ideas that we'll be referencing for a long time and it's an absolutely brilliant example of how to write such a cultural identity-focused cookbook.
value 9
accessibility 8
flavor 7
writing 3
February 23, 2023
A collection of fusion recipes based on Chinese, American and Japanese cuisine. Many of the recipes are geared towards making large portions and won't scale down well. The short chapter on sauces is interesting, though once again a bit on the large size. Since it's recently published the list of online sources is up to date and useful ans the short bibliography section has some current books on Taiwan. A decent read, but probably more useful for families and parties.
July 12, 2023
A very solid cookbook. Learned a lot about Taiwanese American restaurant culture in the US and about specific dishes I hadn’t known much about previously. Took a star away for arbitrary reasons because I feel like these dishes aren’t as accessible without buying a lot of new ingredients (which is fair) but still a pain. Definitely more of an advanced niche cookbook to recreate restaurant dishes than a simple easy to cook at home cookbook.
March 2, 2023
More American than it is Taiwanese. In the 6 years I've lived in Taiwan I have not seen any of the dishes done the same way as this cookbook.
It may be a American fusion Taiwanese cookbook but it is definitely not authentic Taiwanese, do not get it if you want to cook real Taiwanese food, better off finding recipes on Google.
It may be a American fusion Taiwanese cookbook but it is definitely not authentic Taiwanese, do not get it if you want to cook real Taiwanese food, better off finding recipes on Google.
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August 27, 2023Made the fly’s head and may make some other stuff, but overall a fun cookbook with a design and voice I liked a lot.
November 21, 2025
Super fun recipes and looking forward to trying a lot of them.
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February 19, 2026Taiwanese-American fusion
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews