Celebrity chef Mary Berg, best known for her appearance on MasterChef Canada, has won the gold medal for best general cookbook at the 2022 Taste Canada Awards.

The only food writing awards in Canada, the Taste Canada Awards celebrate the best Canadian food writing of the year.

The awards are celebrating their 25th anniversary in 2022.

Berg was recognized for her cookbook Well Seasoned. Well Seasoned is Berg's second cookbook. It features 100 seasonal recipes for her second cookbook, focusing on meals she typically cooks for family and friends over the course of a year.

Berg is an Ontario home cook and currently the host of Mary's Kitchen Crush. She is also the author of the cookbook Kitchen Party.

Toronto food writer Sam Turnbull, known for the vegan food blog It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken, took home silver in the general cookbook category for Fast Easy Cheap Vegan.

Berg was among five gold medal winners across five English-language categories, recognizing the best in Canadian food writing. Gold and silver medal winners are awarded in each category: general cookbooks, culinary narratives, regional/cultural cookbooks, single-subject cookbooks and health or special diet cookbooks.

Bread & Water: Essays by Saskatchewan writer dee Hobsbawn-Smith took home the gold in the culinary narratives category.

Bread & Water is a collection of essays that looks at two ingredients fundamental to most meals — the titular bread and water — and uses them to explore big life questions and themes, such as loss, grief, aging, politics and more.

Hobsbawn-Smith is a journalist, writer and former restaurateur. Her other books include Foodshed: An Edible Alberta Alphabet, The Curious Cook at Home and Wildness Rushing In: Poems.

Food to Grow On: The Ultimate Guide to Childhood Nutrition from Pregnancy to Packed Lunches by Sarah Remmer and Cara Rosenbloom won silver in the culinary narratives category.

Shahir Massoud, who has hosted TV shows such as CBC's The Goods, Man of the Kitchen and Around the World in 8 Meals, won the gold medal in the regional/cultural cookbooks category for Eat, Habibi, Eat! Fresh Recipes for Modern Egyptian Cooking.

Eat, Habibi, Eat! features 100 Middle Eastern inspired recipes, bringing together a mix of classic recipes and Massoud's updates on beloved favourites. Massoud also shares several personal stories, sharing how he developed his love for food and how he became a top chef.

Macedonia: The Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from the Balkans by Katarina Nitsou took home silver. Nitsou is a Macedonian Canadian chef who is from Toronto and now lives in Australia.

In the single-subject cookbooks category, Jam Bake: Inspired Recipes for Creating and Baking with Preserves by Toronto writer, recipe developer and master preserver Camilla Wynne was awarded gold while The Zero-Waste Chef: Plant-Forward Recipes and Tips for a Sustainable Kitchen and Planet by Anne-Marie Bonneau, a Canadian blogger who now lives in San Francisco, took home silver.

The Food Doula Cookbook: A Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy and a Nourished New Mom by Lindsay Taylor won gold in the health or special diet cookbooks category. No silver medal was awarded in this category.

Forty-five titles from six provinces were nominated for this year's awards.

Taste Canada also inducted two members into its hall of fame: Ukrainaina Canadian chef Savella Stechishin and Quebecois chef Micheline Mongrain-Dontigny.

Stechisin is the chef behind Traditional Ukrainian Cookery, which was first published in 1957 and is still considered the definitive English-language guide to Ukrainian cooking. Stechsin was born in Ukraine in 1903 and came to Canada with her family when she was nine years old. She was one of the first women to receive a degree from the University of Saskatchewan and would go on to become a chef, teacher and journalist. She was pivotal in supporting the Ukrainian Canadian community, helping found the Ukrainian Women's Association of Canada and the Ukrainian Museum of Canada and was an editor at Ukrainian Voice. She was named a member of the Order of Canada in 1989. She died in 2002.

Mongrain-Dontigny is the author of 14 cookbooks highlighting Quebec cuisine and culture, including 1988's La Cuisine Renouvelée and 2016's Les Grands Classiques de la Cuisine d'Ici. She chaired the French-language cookbook committee for Taste Canada's predecessor, Cuisine Canada.