Michelle Zauner’s recipe for consoling grief: A taste of home

“Every time I remember that my mother is dead, it feels like I’m colliding with a wall that won’t give… There’s no escape, just a hard surface that I keep ramming into over and over, a reminder of the immutable reality that I will never see her again.” – From “Crying in H Mart” by Michelle Zauner

Author and musician Michelle Zauner was 25 years old when her mother died of cancer.  “This half-an-inch tumor, like, destroyed my family and tore my life apart,” Zauner said. “And I think I just needed all of the space and word count and time to sort through that.”

Her story of climbing out from the depths of grief, “Crying in H Mart,” became a runaway bestseller.

“For a long time, you know, I couldn’t remember my mom before she was sick,” she said, “because I had lived 3,000 miles away since I was 18, so the last concentrated period of time that we spent together was when she was ill.”

In the aisles of the Korean-owned grocery chain, H Mart, Zauner found comfort: “Suddenly I wasn’t thinking about my mom losing her hair, or my mom losing weight; I was thinking about us in Korea eating patsingsu – shaved ice with sweet red beans – and it was like a parting of a cloud, a mental cloud.”

“I know we are all here for the same reason. We’re all searching for a piece of home or a piece of ourselves. We look for a taste of it in the food we order and the ingredients we buy.”

Correspondent Hua Hsu asked Zauner, “Do you feel like you’re, like, a spokesperson for H Mart sometimes?”

“Yeah. I mean, I feel like their #1 cheerleader. I’m just, like, a very big fan!”

Zauner’s influence is undeniable as soon as you walk through the door of H Mart; her promotional video plays on a loop. “This is actually the first time I’ve seen this on the TV!” she laughed.

Nearly 40 years ago, H Mart opened a store in Flushing, Queens in New York, selling mostly Korean ingredients, as well as other Asian snacks and produce.  Today, it’s the country’s largest Asian grocery chain, with more than 100 stores nationwide. 

It has become a kind of hub for Lunar New Year shopping: “You have to treat yourself to some fancy fruits,” Zauner said, holding up a Korean pear, encased in foam netting. “You know that produce is special when it comes with its own down jacket!”

Zauner is gathering ingredients to make a stew that, she says, works for Lunar New Year, and all year-round. “I think the best thing that I know how to make is kimchi jjigae, a Korean kimchi stew,” she said. “It’s kind of like the chicken soup of Korean culture.”

Kimchi is a staple of Korean cuisine, and its fermented, often spicy vegetables are the base of this stew. 

“The key to really good kimchi jjigae is really old, funky, aged kimchi,” Zauner said.

“It’s making its presence known!” Hsu said.

“Yeah, this is made with cabbage. It’s fermented with red pepper flakes, with onion and garlic and sometimes carrots and radishes.”

The longer the kimchi has aged, the more flavorful the stock. Simmer with some onions and pork, and top with tofu and scallions.

Hsu said, “It has such, like, a depth of flavor. I can’t believe it just took, like, 20 minutes to make. It’s delicious!”

“My mom made really good kimchi jjigae,” said Zauner. “So for me, when I think of, like, Korean food and Korean comfort cooking and my mom’s cooking, this was one of the main dishes that I always think of, and was one of the most important things for me to learn how to make on my own because it was something that I really, really missed eating.”

“There was a part of me that felt, or maybe hoped, that after my mother died, I had absorbed her in some way, that she was a part of me now.” 

These days, Michelle Zauner is preparing to go on tour with her indie pop band, Japanese Breakfast. And she’s turning her memoir into a movie.

Hsu asked, “Do you see writing and cooking as a way of bringing your mother back just for these moments?”

“Yeah, absolutely,” she replied. “To scour memory and relive and see and smell and taste and hear all of those things again, it’s kind of the closest that you can get to resuscitating someone.”

      
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Story produced by Mary Raffalli. Editor: Carol Ross.