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My Malaysian Food Journey wins award at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2024
Kalsom (right) won in the Food Heritage Books category for her book My Malaysian Food Journey at the recent Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2024. — KALSOM TAIB
At the recent Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2024 held in Lisbon, Portugal from 18 to 22 June 2025, The Star columnist Datin Kalsom Taib emerged victorious in the Food Heritage Books category for culinary memoir My Malaysian Food Journey .
My Malaysian Food Journey is a compilation of Kalsom's fortnightly columns in The Star , which she turned into a book.
An accomplished cookbook author, Kalsom beat out three other finalists from Portugal, Thailand and Slovenia for the win.
The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards is often described as the Oscars for cookbooks. It awards the best global food and wine publications in printed or digital format as well as food television.
Kalsom is an accomplished cookbook author who started writing her Culinary Inspirations column in 2023 when she was 80. — MY MALAYSIAN FOOD JOURNEY
'I doa (prayed) a lot – not so much for me but for Malaysia because the title of my book is My Malaysian Food Journey so it is a win for my country, not really for myself.
'When they announced that my book had won, I was very overwhelmed but I was so happy and pleased because this book is not really a recipe book but a compilation of food stories,' says Kalsom in a phone interview from Lisbon, where she is celebrating with her family.
Kalsom's journey to publishing My Malaysian Food Journey began in a rather unorthodox way in 2023 at the age of 80 when she started writing a fortnightly column in The Star called Culinary Inspirations. Beginning June 2025, her columns have become monthly affairs.
My Malaysian Food Journey features 24 of Kalsom's columns in The Star from 2023 to mid-2024. — MY MALAYSIAN FOOD JOURNEY
Kalsom's columns explore her memories of her childhood, teenage years and adulthood and how food forms a fierce connective and cultural force in her life, binding her to a wide range of Malaysians of all walks of life.
At their heart, her charming stories introduce readers to a bygone era and a range of personalities like Mak Li, the family's cherished helper of over five decades. Most of her columns also include recipes for dishes like tosai, nasi biryani, pengat and laksa Johor, to name a few.
In 2024, she compiled 24 of those heart-warming columns into a book called My Malaysian Food Journey .
Unlike conventional cookbooks, the book is 90% stories and 10% recipes – something that Kalsom believes set it apart from other cookbooks in the same category that she competed in.
Although the book mostly details Kalsom's culinary memories, it also highlights recipes for dishes like laksa Johor. — MY MALAYSIAN FOOD JOURNEY
'The other titles were mostly recipes with short stories. Mine is mostly stories with culture, history, feelings and memories – with recipes accompanying it. So my book was quite different,' she says.
My Malaysian Food Journey is a continuation of Kalsom's culinary-focused work. Her previous cookbooks include Gourmand World Cookbook Award winning titles like Johor Palate: Tanjung Puteri Recipes, Malaysia's Culinary Heritage and Recipes Are for Sharing .
In 2025, she published a second book out of her columns in The Star , titled My Malaysian Food Journey: More Culinary Adventures .
Kalsom says this book has already been submitted for award contention and she is hopeful that it will do as well as its predecessor.
Mak Li is one of the many personalities featured in Kalsom's columns, which were then turned into her first book My Malaysian Food Journey. — MY MALAYSIAN FOOD JOURNEY
While Kalsom initially said she felt that was going to be her last book, bagging a win at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards seems to have given her a new lease of life as she now says she can't be sure she won't write another book.
'We plan but God decides so if I find that my articles are interesting, I may consider turning the next series of columns into another book,' she says.
