Chang Sun-Young pulls out a large bowl of parboiled, English-cut short ribs from her refrigerator. The tiny 67-year-old woman with the booming, raspy voice is making galbijim for a very special dinner. This braised short rib dish will be the cornerstone of an elegant, traditional Korean feast for her husband and a few visiting girlhood friends.

Standing 4’11” tall at her customized marble top island in her kitchen in Fremont, Calif., her hands fly through a pile of carrots on a vast wooden chopping board, skillfully slivering them with a small knife. She then minces scallions and quarters rehydrated shiitake mushrooms so they resemble gingko leaves.

Along with the galbijim, Chang is preparing gujulpan (nine-section dish), japchae, and oiseon (stuffed pickles). She will also serve freshly steamed ddeok and homemade shikyhe (sweet rice drink) for dessert.

As the author of four Korean food cookbooks, Chang has made sumptuous meals like this countless times. Published a decade ago, A Korean Mother’s Cooking Notes sold 100,000 copies in Korea and its English translation sold 13,000 copies. Chang is currently working on her fifth cookbook, which will be in English and published this spring.

The impetus for A Korean Mother’s Cooking Notes developed after Chang shared some of her recipes with her two daughter-in-laws so they could prepare the same food that her sons grew up eating. The core philosophy behind her cooking style boils down to one essential ingredient: love. She says that thoughtfulness and consideration of her family and those who enjoy her food imbue every decision in the kitchen. Which is why she’s diligent about sieving out impurities, slicing ingredients to uniform bite-sized pieces, and ferreting out the freshest materials.

Chang moves stealthily from the chopping board to the deep stainless steel sink, and outside to the giant clay vats of fermenting bean paste, tidying as she goes. She massages table salt into the slivers of cucumber peel and after 10 minutes, squeezes them out vigorously with a cheesecloth. Then she focuses on the silken wrappers for the gujulpan.

Chang developed her passion for gourmet Korean food after she married her husband Youngil Lee, a retired electronic engineering executive and also an avid wine collector. He was a branch manager for an American company called Fairchild Semiconductors.

“Back in 1967, there weren’t any good restaurants for entertaining in Korea, so I had to learn how to cook,” Chang explains as she pulls the lid off the steaming stock pot and adds some carrots. “Nice restaurants didn’t start popping up until around 1980.”

Chang, a graduate of Ewha Women’s University, took private lessons with the now deceased Kang In-Hee, a professor of cooking at Myunji University, and visited the kitchens of Korean aristocrats. She focused on recreating the taste and textures of her ancestral North Korean regional food. Her cuisine reflects the mild seasonings and emphasis on fine ingredients that are synonymous with the area.