Mom a big influence on chef's debut cookbook

Author taps Caribbean heritage, South Asian roots and global travels in debut cookbook

Chef Devan Rajkumar is always on the move. Based in his hometown of Toronto, he spends most of the year travelling. Each time, it's something different, whether doing menu development in Scotland, training staff at a luxury resort in Turks and Caicos or cooking his Guyanese pepper pot smashburger in a viral TikTok video for Danny Kim (a.k.a. Danny Grubs). “It all flows into one. It's exciting,” he says.

Since Rajkumar started cooking in the late 2000s — increasingly drawing on his Guyanese, Caribbean and West Indian heritage — people have been asking for his recipes. “I think it's because I have a unique take on food, and I always like to do things differently. In my head, a lot of things go together that are uncommon.”

Rajkumar's culinary influences define his cookbook debut, Mad Love (Figure 1 Publishing, 2024). The book reflects his global travels, his Toronto home, his parents' native Guyana and his ancestral roots in South Asia. Recipes include twists such as Caribbean-inspired ceviche and palak paneer spanakopita, classic Guyanese chicken curry, cook-up rice and metemgee with duff and South Asian saffron kheer.

Guyana is a South American nation in the Caribbean. Rajkumar's ancestors were among the people the British transported from India to the Caribbean as indentured servants after the abolition of slavery in the 19th century. He has travelled extensively in India and Pakistan, retracing the roots of Indo-Guyanese dishes from childhood. Rajkumar moves freely between South Asia and the Caribbean in Mad Love and all his work. He might make malai kofta one day and coconut choka the next.

Rajkumar says Mad Love would have been a different book if he had written it five years ago. He trained in French, Italian, Mexican and Japanese cuisine, and it took him some time to return to the food of his heritage.

Watching the Netflix series Chef's Table, Rajkumar realized that many of the chefs profiled left home to work and travel abroad. But in most cases, they returned to their homeland and the food they grew up with. Earlier in his career, Rajkumar thought that Caribbean food “couldn't hold a candle” to the depth of the French, Italian and Mexican cuisines he studied. “Until I realized that it could. And then I realized that it's my duty and responsibility to not only showcase it but make it more accessible to the younger generations and present it in ways that the world will get to learn about it,” says Rajkumar.

“It feels really good to be cooking the food I grew up with — food from my motherland — because you can't take it away from me. It's deep inside me. And it's very fulfilling because I'm constantly inundated with feedback from the community, where they're just over the moon that their children can learn, be inspired and get connected to the food that they grew up with back home in Guyana, throughout the Caribbean and even in India.”

Rajkumar has visited more than 50 countries and grew up travelling with his parents, who opened a corporate travel agency in the early 2000s. He saw people living abroad or travelling extensively and wondered how they did it. So, he found a way to make it happen for himself, starting with travelling around the world for six months.

He and his mom, Bhano Rajkumar, still travel a lot together, and she appears regularly on his social media accounts. As a child, he followed her around the kitchen as she experimented with new ingredients she'd picked up on her trips. Many of the recipes in the book came from Bhano's kitchen, including her signature okra, dhal and roti (accompanied by a step-by-step two-page photo spread).

“My mom is a big, big influence. She's always been my ride-ordie. She's always been the No. 1 person in my corner.”

When Rajkumar saw the first finished copy of Mad Love, he brought his mom in to show it to her and filmed her reaction to share on social media. “I remember when she flipped through to see one of her recipes — this is a big deal for her. And it's just an amazing way for me to give back to her. Everyone knows that we're really, really close. So, my hope with this is that it'll bring us even closer. And bring other people, mothers and children, closer around the world.” Recipes excerpted from Mad Love: Big flavours Made to Share, from South Asia to the West Indies — A Cookbook by Devan Rajkumar (Figure 1 Publishing).