Datin Kalsom Taib's food memories come alive in culinary memoir
Early last year, Datin Kalsom Taib and I sat down to talk about her most recent book, My Malaysian Food Journey , a compilation of the Culinary Inspirations food columns she had written for The Star from 2023 to 2024, which were then expanded and adapted into a book.
During that interview, she was quite certain that would be her last book. 'I'm already 82, you know,' she said with certainty.
And yet, here we are one year later talking about her latest book, My Malaysian Food Journey : More Culinary Adventures , the second book to compile the columns she has written for The Star from mid-2024 to early 2025.
Incidentally, the sprightly, energetic octogenarian managed to produce the book in just under a year, and that too, at the ripe old age of 83.
Kalsom discovered laksam when she was working on her cookbook Malaysia's Culinary Heritage and she talks about the preparation of the dish in her book.
'How I decided to turn the columns into a book was because my aunty, who is over 90 years old, said she enjoyed my stories. And she informed me that she would cut outthe stories when they appeared in the newspapers and file them.
'So that got me thinking and my editor also said, 'Maybe you should put it into a book. Then it would all be documented in a single book.' And I could add more pictures and recipes because in the newspaper, I was limited by space constraints. So that's how I ended up doing the first book and this latest one too,' she says, smiling sweetly.
Kalsom is a former head of human resources at a multinational corporation who discovered a new lease of life after retirement when she began writing cookbooks.
To date, the seasoned cookbook author has written multiple award-winning titles, including Johor Palate : Tanjung Puteri Recipes and Malaysia's Culinary Heritage (both of which were produced with her cousin Hamidah Abdul Hamid) as well as Recipes Are For Sharing . All her books have been nominated for or bagged awards at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.
But it was Malaysia's Culinary Heritage which formed the impetus for her popular columns in The Star . The columns document her nostalgic food memories and recollections of growing up in yesteryear's Malaysia and showcase the recipes she has collected over the years – many of which were published in previous cookbooks.
Kalsom has stayed in touch with many of her old friends, through whom she has learnt many recipes and culinary secrets. Pictured here is Kalsom with her close friends Safiah Osman and Elly Tan.
'I did my second book, Malaysia's Culinary Heritage , because the National Heritage Department had a list of foods gazetted as national heritage dishes. But it was just a list.
'So I asked them whether I could do a cookbook with heritage recipes. And from there, it gave birth to the book with all the 213 gazetted heritage dishes plus 17 more that I felt deserved to be on the list.
'But those were mostly recipes and I always believe that food has a story. So when The Star offered me a column, I decided to build stories from the food with culture, history, personalities involved and also my own memories,' she says.
The journey continues
Given that she has done this all before many times, Kalsom says putting together My Malaysian Food Journey : More Culinary Adventures was relatively stress-free with one exception: she struggled a little in terms of finding additional old images to go with the book.
'It took me nearly four years to do my first cookbook because I was inexperienced. Once I got the knack of doing it, the second book took one and a half years. The rest of my books have taken less than a year to put together.
'So actually it's straightforward but the challenge was to find the photos because I wanted to add more old photos. Because for me, a picture says a thousand words. Without it, the book is empty – it doesn't have a soul.
'So I remember I managed to track down pictures of my family in front of our old house and pictures of my parents attending dinner parties. It was how I remembered what it was like in Johor in the old days and I could expand on the stories,' she says.
Kalsom says putting the book together was relatively easy but finding old pictures to adorn the pages was a little tougher. — AZMAN GHANI/The Star
Since she had more space at her disposal, Kalsom also ended up adding more recipes to the book than what was originally in her columns. New additions include recipes for madeleines, marble cake and ayam ungkep, which is a dish served as part of the Javanese nasi ambeng.
The book
My Malaysian Food Journey : More Culinary Adventures continues in the vein of its predecessor in that it shares a treasure trove of recipes, historical nuggets and personal recollections that feature food as a binding force.
If anything, this book is even more precious because it could very well be Kalsom's last. And her memories are integral because they serve as a bridge to the past and a pathway to simpler times. It is also a reminder that having a broad culinary perspective requires interacting with many other Malaysians and discovering the wealth of culinary riches the country has to offer.
Fried eggs in tomato sauce was one of Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj's favourite breakfast dishes and Kalsom obtained the recipe from his late daughter, Datuk Paduka Tunku Khadijah.
The book also highlights Kalsom's sheer charm and the breadth of her winning, sunny personality. There aren't many people who continue to collect friends as they grow older and yet she does this with aplomb, learning new recipes and cultural and culinary secrets through these exchanges.
'We don't abandon old friends. We collect friends as we go along, but we still keep in touch. Because one of the best therapies in life is to have friends and go and eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner and laugh and chit-chat,' she says.
Many of the stories in the book focus on the people who have informed her culinary pedagogy. For example, she talks about her friendship with the Sidhus, a Sikh family that she has known for more than 30 years, from whom she learnt how to make aloo gobi (spiced potatoes and cauliflower), a recipe she shares in the book.
There is also the story of one of Kalsom's closest friends, Elly Tan Sha Meng, whom she has known since they both attended the University of Malaya in the 1960s. Kalsom recalls Tan's mother, Goh Soh Kheng (whose picture she has included in the book) going out of her way to prepare halal dishes for Kalsom and two other Malay friends when they attended the family's annual Chinese New Year gathering.
Kalsom has preserved many strong friendships over the years. She is pictured here with the Sidhu family, her friends of over 30 years who shared their recipe for aloo ghobi with her.
Even younger people are not immune to her charms. In the book, pastry chef Farid of Marc et Farid Patisserie in Taman Tun Dr Ismail (now closed) shares his recipe for French madeleines, having recently befriended Kalsom.
Kalsom's own family-centric food memories are even more cherished and highlight her Miss Marple-esque observational skills, which were acute even as a child. In one of her stories, she recounts how the family's beloved helper Mak Li (who served the family for five decades) made pulut kuning to commemorate the birth of her youngest brother. Mak Li was also responsible for the family's assortment of waffles topped with innovative additions like leftover rendang and even sambal tumis!
Kalsom says she never actually plans her stories or has a tangible idea of what to write until something jogs her memory. Her story about telur pindang (eggs slow-cooked with local herbs and spices) for example was influenced by a wedding she attended.
'I went to a wedding recently and I was given telur pindang and it triggered a flashback about how I got this recipe from my son-in-law's family in Batu Pahat, Johor. And I love telur pindang but many people don't like it because it has a medicinal smell,' she says.
Telur pindang is one of the dishes that has many nostalgic recollections for Kalsom. In the past, it was a firm fixture in the Malay culture of gift-giving, especially for weddings. — KALSOM TAIB
Kalsom also writes at length about the history and context behind each dish, weaving in tales of migration and adaptation into each of her buoyant narratives.
'A lot of people don't know much about the food that we eat. They just eat it but they don't know the background.
'Like biryani – it's a Persian dish that travelled to India and then came to Johor and now we have the biryani gam, which incorporates Malay spices, so it has become a different dish altogether.
'And some dishes, if I don't write it down and explain what it is, it will become endangered. So we have to preserve the stories behind the food,' she says.
Ultimately, Kalsom says her goal is to draw Malaysians together through the conduit of food and remind them of the past and how it has a role in the present. Memories are not stagnant and time doesn't stand still, but culinary culture is worth conserving and remembering and she wants Malaysians of every stripe to recognise and appreciate this.
'Food has a culture, it has a history, it has stories, it has memories and it also binds people together. So this is the agenda behind the publication of my stories, which gives me an opportunity to also share my memories. The fact that I'm already 83 – I have a lot of memories. So why not share them?' she says.
My Malaysian Food Journey: More Culinary Adventures is priced at RM100 (soft copy)/RM140 (hard copy) and is available at Kinokuniya KLCC, MPH and directly through Kalsom at kalsomt@gmail.com.
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