Author Ann Y.K. Choi finds inspiration in the pungent kimchi she once resented

TORONTO — Author Ann Y.K. Choi says the pungent smell of kimchi that once embarrassed her as a child in Toronto now inspires her writing and connects her to her Korean heritage.

"For a week, everything smells like garlic and fish sauce," she said of her parents' kimchi-making sessions in the 1970s, when the fermented vegetables were hard to find in the city.

Choi's youth was marked by huge boxes of green napa cabbage, red gochugaru, white radishes and the sight of her parents, two proud Korean-Canadian variety store owners, chopping and prepping the vegetables.

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As a child, she resented the sharp scent of garlic and the funk of fish sauce that lingered in her clothes and hair.

Choi, author of three books including "Kay's Lucky Coin Variety" and "All Things Under the Moon," uses Korean food as a motif throughout her fiction.

Her debut novel, published in 2016, was the first contemporary Korean novel published in Canada and drew from her upbringing above her parents' Trinity-Bellwoods convenience store.

Much of the plot was inspired by the milk, bread and peanut butter she saw their white customers buy, and the hours her parents spent above the shop fermenting foods and preparing banchan, side dishes of seasoned vegetables, for their own meals.

Seeing that contrast fed Choi's rejection of Korean food. "As a young person, I always wondered, why is Korean food so hard?" she said.

Now, she has her choice of kimchi and fermented soy beans at the many Korean grocery stores in her North York neighbourhood, including chains like Galleria Supermarket, H Mart and PAT Supermarket that have spread across Canada to meet demand.

Kimchi has grown in popularity, with videos touting its health benefits racking up tens of thousands of views on social media as more Canadians turn to fermented foods for their potential to improve their gut microbiome and immune function.

When choosing store-bought kimchi for her daughter and mother, Choi turns to H Mart or Galleria, grocery stores that make their banchan in-house.

She looks for kimchi made with napa cabbage and a strong smell of garlic and fish sauce. "It should smell pungent. That means it has sat for a while to ferment," she said.

Choi said she saves money on groceries by chasing weekly flyers online. "My mom got me into them, she gets the Korean newspaper, where they advertise. I now do it online, where it's easy to find deals," she said.

Her splurge is Korean rice cakes. "I absolutely love them," Choi said, noting she buys them from Luna Bakery on Yonge Street where boxes of mini rice cakes are $8.99.

"Because rice cakes don't have gluten, I can still indulge despite my gluten sensitivity," she said.

The hardest habit, she said, is trying to maintain the tradition of making stuff from scratch. "It's hard to resist the temptation to buy premade instead of appreciating the process of making things from scratch to teach my daughter her culture," Choi said.

Her eating habits changed after her father was diagnosed with stomach cancer. "It forced my family to rethink what goes into our bodies," she said.

"I now eat more intentionally, rather than eating out or eating highly processed foods often, where I can't see what ingredients they put into their food," Choi said.

She has also started introducing more proteins and foods into her diet that she knows are high in nutrients, such as sardines and liver meat.

With files from The Globe and Mail