Book Talk: Chef Dev Dishes on Food, Travel, and More

In this bonus episode of the Moreish Podcast, Chef Devan Rajkumar, known for his Cityline appearances and social media presence as Chef Dev, talks about his Guyanese and South Asian roots and culinary journey.

He shares insights into his debut cookbook, 'Mad Love: Big Flavours Made to Share from South Asia to the Caribbean', recounts his early career, the influence of his family's heritage, and his world travels. The episode also explores the cultural connections in Indo-Caribbean cuisine and Chef Dev's mission to modernize traditional dishes.

Resources:

Connect with Devan Rajkumar on his website, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube

Mad Love Cookbook

The Food Dudes

Chef Dev on CityLine

Foodie Nation

Chef Jason Peru
The Social

Transcript

Hema: Welcome to another bonus episode of the Moreish Podcast. Today, I'm chatting with Devan Rajkumar. You might know him from his appearances as a food expert on Cityline, one of his many pop ups around the world, or as Chef Dev on social media. Born in Toronto into a Guyanese household, he grew up surrounded by diverse communities and cuisines.

An established media personality, Chef Dev's relaxed and modern approach to cooking is steeped in his Caribbean family heritage and his South Asian ancestry. He is on a mission to create food that modernizes the craft, traditions, and taste of East and West Indian cuisines. Chef Dev's first cookbook, Mad Love: Big Flavors Made to Share from South Asia to the Caribbean, is out now.

Now let's get into it.

Chef Dev, it is nice to see you. I've really been looking forward to this conversation. So before we get started, why don't you introduce yourself?

Dev: Sounds good. First and foremost, thank you for having me. Uh, to everybody watching, to everybody listening, my name is Chef, my name is Devan Rajkumar. I work as a chef, it's important that I distinguish the two. I'm a Toronto based chef, although these days, I spend the majority of the year travelling, doing pop ups, uh, all around the world, cooking, doing events, promotional stuff.

Just launched a menu in Turks and Caicos, I'm going back, in a few days to check on that. And, and yeah, just launched a debut cookbook, it's very, very exciting. I'm just trying to stay as busy as possible. And I want to strike while the iron's hot and keep the momentum.

Hema: What's your cookbook called?

Dev: My cookbook is called Mad Love. I have it right here, obviously. Right, Mad Love. It's actually, I just checked and I just posted. It's a bestseller in three different categories on Amazon Canada right now. So I'm so grateful for that. It's performing very well. And the reason why I have it so close by is because at the bottom it says, Big Flavours, Made to Share, from South Asia to the West Indies.

Which I'm sure we're going to dig into that a little bit in this, in this, in this interview.

Hema: We are definitely going to talk about that. So I want to start a little bit further back. You're a classically trained chef. Yes?

Dev: I  am classically correct.

Hema: And what was your early career like?

Dev: Oh God. I went to culinary school back in 2009, so about 15ish years ago. I went back I went to culinary school to with aspirations of becoming a food critic. It was only til I got into the labs and got into cooking. And I loved cooking before this, don't get me wrong. I went to become a better cook.

Um, but I I really realized how much I loved cooking for people, is really what changed for me in culinary school. I loved seeing the look on their face when they ate the food and stuff like that. And that's really what drew me into cooking professionally, or at least pursuing, pursuing it. I got to keep it real and a hundred with everybody, like for the first half of my career. Even up until last week. You know, sometimes I feel like I don't know what I'm doing, to be honest with you. Uh, I'm just, I just knew that I had to brand myself and learn as much as possible and take risks. And that's really been my motto for a lot of my career. But earlier on in my career, it was very challenging.

You know, I started working with the Food Dudes, who are one of the biggest companies in Canada, catering companies, they've opened up in Miami as well, Food Dudes South. They're a multi, multi million dollar company, right? And I started working off with them when there was just a few chefs, you know, they have over a hundred employees now, but I was like one of five when I first started working with them.

Uh, very challenging, you know, uh, anytime you start working into a new kitchen, you're going to get picked on. You're going to have a tough time. I remember spending whole days in the dish pit. I was there to cook. I was there to learn as much as possible. I spent entire days in the dish pit. I remember one of the chefs would be like, someone might hear this and think it's mean, but I mean, it's just, it is what it is, right?

It is what it is. But I remember like we had to run downstairs to get produce from the fridge. So I remember like, One of the chefs would send me down and as soon as I get back up, he sends me back down again. As soon as I come back up, he sends me back down again. All that kind of stuff. And like, when you're in a high pressure environment and you're trying to do your best and you're working as fast as possible to meet the deadlines for catering and events and etc, etc, it's, you know, it can be really tough and challenging.

Uh, but that's part of the industry, and it's also like a part of the story and like, you got to pay your dues.

A lot of people might see what I'm doing. Like a lot of people, for example, look at my life now and they're like, Oh my God, this guy, this chef, he just gets to travel the world and he's in all these exotic places.

And it's like, I spent so many years working towards this thing. When people call me lucky and stuff like that, I'm just like, you don't know what you're talking about. Because I've made so many sacrifices. Literally blood, sweat, and tears. Literally blood, sweat, and tears, right? So, yeah, the first, uh, the first part of my journey, it was very exciting because I was learning so much and I was in this new space.

But it was very challenging physically and mentally, no question.

Hema: So then you moved outside of the actual, restaurant and the kitchen, per se, into the field that you are right now. And I know it didn't happen overnight, right? We just talked about that, blood, sweat, and tears. But now you've sort of built your career as a, a cookbook author, a media personality, a consultant, a traveler, a storyteller. How did that come about? Was that intentional? Did, did that just happen?

Dev: I don't know. I don't know. Um, I left the Food Dudes after three years. I went to work at a very high end appliance studio in the city. Working at the appliance studio was very, very important to my career because all I was doing was live demonstration type work while cooking. And that's, I consider personally one of my strong suits when it comes to this field is live demonstration type work.

I love being able to engage and captivate a crowd and work a crowd, and I do it often, right? And I love doing it and going back to working from 2012 to 2014 and beyond in that studio. It just, it trained me so well with, with demonstrations, especially City Line. I, I just wrapped 10 years filming City Line.

That started in, yeah, 10 years. Old, old man. So that, uh, that, uh, that helped me out, a lot as well. But there's been a lot of, uh, there's been a lot of challenging things, in my career.

Hema: It sounds like it just sort of organically unfolded.

Dev: Correct. It does a big part to the story though, because a big part of my life is traveling and exploring and learning about other cultures and bringing back what I learned and sharing what I know, etc, etc. In 2016, in 2015 rather, I was opening up a restaurant for the Food Dudes, right? I wanted to get more restaurant experience at this time, and there were two chefs that I really admired and looked up to, and I still do to this day.

You know, and they were opening a restaurant. So I went to go work at that restaurant for a bit. That was 10 a. m. to 2 a. m. for a few weeks, by the way. Can you imagine 10 a. m. to 2 a. m. and that, like those prep days, you're holding your pee because you don't have time. Like, that's what I'm saying. Like, people couldn't imagine this type of work.

I'm not saying it's the hardest type of work out there. Restaurant work, and opening new restaurants, and the demands, and the intensity, and the pressure that comes with that. I'd literally get in there at 10 in the morning, and I'm going moving as fast as I can and we're getting the line ready for five and then it's service and then service is done and then you're tearing down and then you clean up and you get home, uh two in the morning or something two three in the morning and then you get up in the morning and you go back. That's that's intense and that's that's what's important about this industry, is paying your paying your dues and earning those stripes It makes you real tough, too.

Right? But, going back to the travel thing. So in 2015, I started, I opened up this restaurant and then 2016, I left for six months, six months. And I traveled all around the world. I spent a month in Dubai, month in India, month in London, month throughout Europe, month in Peru. And I took any type of work that I could, any job that I could get to get as much experience as possible.

Little did I know upon returning to Canada, it kind of positioned me as a a chef without boundaries, as someone who is not afraid to go explore, as someone who cooked abroad, and I got, I got really excited by that. And when I was traveling, and when I came back, a lot of people asked me like, what's the most exciting thing that you learned?

Expecting to hear one thing back, you know, one dish or, or ingredient that I found. And what I learned from taking that trip was that, um, I learned that I didn't know as much about food as I thought I did. And thus began that journey for exploring as much cuisine as possible from outside the bubble that I'm in here in Toronto and in Canada.

So a big part of my journey these days and a big part of my world is traveling. I fly out on Saturday to Turks. A few days later, I'm in Dallas. A few days later, I'm in L. A. and so on and so forth, and it's a dream. It's a dream come true. It's not easy to live out of a suitcase and travel life, but I love it.

I think single life for me serves that. It helps me out in that regard. But my whole journey of becoming, you know, a media personality and story to all this stuff is organic. There was no, I had no game plan. I, a lot of kids come to me and a lot of students come to me asking me to mentor them and I tell them to put pen to paper and figure out what it is you want to see in one, three, five years.

And then once you know where you want to be in five years, then you know, kind of what steps you want to take in the interim to achieve that goal. I give that advice and I never even did it myself. Right. So I just kind of figured it out on the go. It's the honest truth.

Hema: And, and sometimes that happens, right? It unfolds the way it's going to unfold. But I think the important part that you talk about is you put in the work, right? To get from one step to the next. So you talk about, or on, on your website, it talks about you, growing up in Toronto, in a Guyanese household around different communities and diversity. And as I sort of talked about your early career to where you are now and your cookbook really focusing on Caribbean cuisine with South Asian, your South Asian heritage. How did you end up focusing and really niching down for this cookbook?

Dev: It's naturally me. When I talk about Guyanese food or South Asian food, like, the food that I want to cook, the food that I inherently want to be known for, the food that is inherently me, is exactly that. It's East and West. Right? A big part of this cookbook for me is retracing the Indo Guyanese food of my childhood that I love so much all the way back to its roots in South Asia.

Whether that being like pholourie being from like Guardas, right? Or whether that be doubles being Chole Bhature or Chana Bhature, right? Like I'm always looking for that. I'm always looking for that connection and it's just really exciting. It's the food that I want to cook. A big part of this story for me is temple.

I was raised very religiously. My parents are very religious and we spent every single Sunday going to temple, going to Vishnu Mandir here in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada. And, um, the interesting thing about this, and I talk about it in the book, this temple was half Guyanese, half Indian, which was very unique for me, because yes, I was raised in a Guyanese Canadian household with Guyanese diaspora and all these hints of South Asian influence, and Desi influence in it, but at temple, most of my friends were like half of them were Punjabi, right?

There was a handful of Gujaratis, you know, like everyone was mixed from all over the place. So I grew up in that environment like learning bits and bobs of Hindi. And the food is really what I fell in love with. You know, traditional Guyanese food at temple, you're going to have dhal, rice, bhaji, you might get pumpkin, mango, typical seven curry type stuff, aloo curry, potato curry, and stuff like that.

You might get some puri and dhal puri and all that stuff. But because of the attendance and because of the demographic of that temple, we had theplas and dahi, we had shahi paneer, you know, kormas, we had gulab jamun, ras malai, jalebi, you know, all these things I grew up with, which is why I feel so comfortable with it now, right?

And that's why I, there's a jalebi recipe in here and a ricotta ras malai recipe. That's why, um, you know, you have vindaloo meatballs in here and that's why there's palak paneer spanakopita, like all these mashups that I'm doing because it just makes sense in my head. Inherently, I feel like it's me. A big part of it is me growing up in temple and me being surrounded by so many people from South Asia, uh, and uh, it's just a part of me.

That's really what it is. And it's exciting too. I'll just close off this question in saying, I spent a lot of time and a lot of years traveling abroad to try and master and learn as much as I could about other cultures. And, you know, I came kind of full circle. And nestled into this kind of role of showcasing and modernizing where I see fit, both West and East Indian cuisine.

Hema: Dev, I don't know what temple you went to, but never did I get dhal puri in a temple. At your, yours, yours was obviously pretty special and somebody took a little bit more care. But it's interesting that you say that, right? Because you grew up, between the two cultures based on your life at temple. Uh, and I, in a Trinidadian family growing up in Rexdale at the time, it felt very much like I was living two lives because people didn't really, at the time, in the 70s, understand the difference between somebody that looks like me being from the Caribbean versus South Asian. And I think that's a, that's a big part of what you were just talking about is there are South Asian influences in Guyanese, in Trinidadian, in all Caribbean food. But to break it down, can you help us understand the difference between the two? So the Indo Caribbean and the South Asian, Indian, food.

Dev: You know what's interesting? Because as you were talking about, we didn't get dhal puri at my temple and stuff like that. My boys, like Ashish, Rakesh, Prashant, all the guys I can think about right now, Gujarati, uh, you know, Indian, that I can think of. All these guys are obsessed with Guyanese food.

All they want is dhal puri, pumpkin, mango curry, all these things that they didn't have in their culture. And believe it or not, on Sundays at temple, and I went there for like 20 25 years, right through my childhood, into my teens, into my early adulthood, but they would always pray on Sunday that a Guyanese family was cooking.

Because you'd get either Guyanese or Indian or stuff like that, you get Trinidadian too, you get all of it, right? Uh, they'd always pray for, for a Guyanese cook. So the difference, I mean, it's a very broad question. We only have so much amount of time. What I can try to explain to you with respect to the Indo Guyanese food, so dhal, curry, roti, um, I mean it goes on and on with the amount of options that there are, bhaji, all of these things, is that I find with my research and, and the amount of time I dedicate to understanding this craft and this cuisine, um, is that I find that Guyanese food uses less spices in a lot of situations. There's less variety in the types of dishes that there are, and you're going to want examples.

What does that mean, right? So like, In Indian cuisine, like you have sabjis and kormas and makhani sauces and like rogan josh. It goes on and on with the amount of specific types of curries and stews. Like, I mean, you have South, North, East, West. Whereas in Guyana, you have a much smaller amount of dishes that are popular, and it's not as vast.

And of course, you've got to think, Guyana's population, not even a million people, India's population, two billion. Yeah, we're talking 1850s through 1900s with indentured servantship, but that's just to give some scale as to where the populations were at. And obviously, if you take someone from a certain region, and you transplant them somewhere else, every year that goes by, everything becomes a little bit more muted, in my opinion.

Right? And that goes for the Hindi that's spoken in Guyana and Trinidad, right? And that goes for, you know, the religious practices and the food and stuff like that. So in a nutshell, I'm trying to be very careful with how I respond here, so I don't piss off a whole set of Guyanese people, you understand?

But, um, but, uh, but yeah, like it's much, it's much more consolidated. Uh, and that's not an insult. I mean, I'm Guyanese. I'm very proud of it. I put it in print and I'm taking it across the world, showcasing Guyanese food. So that's not what I'm trying to say here, but I think it's understandable. The fact that, uh, you know, it's, it's more limited than it would be, than if you were in India, but I noticed less amount of spices.

For example, like in, in, in Guyanese food, like, there's nowhere really that I see kasuri methi, which is fenugreek leaves, which I can't live without. Amchur powder, something else I cannot live without, dried green mango powder. Nowhere in Guyanese cuisine from what I know. Yes, we have mango curry. And yes, there's amchar masala.

But it's not amchur specifically, like Kashmiri lal mirch, like red, red chili powder, Kashmiri red chili powder, um, that's another ingredient I don't see too often. Another great example I can give, uh, not to talk everyone's ear off here, but, when you're making traditional style Guyanese curry, excuse me, or duck curry, or goat curry, it's usually a combination of geera, which is cumin powder, garam masala, curry powder, and turmeric.

That's it, in terms of dry spices. Any Guyanese people watching, I think Trinidadians, with the exception of chandon beni and stuff, will agree with me. Those are the main spices that we're using. Yeah, there's like Madras curry powder, and there's amchur masala and stuff like that, but geera, cumin, garam masala, curry powder, turmeric.

Whereas when you go to make, uh, you know, my, my, um, murgh makhani my butter chicken sauce in here, there's like 13 spices in there, right? There's not as much, yes, garam masala is a combination, but with, with, with the desi cooking, I find that it's a lot more use of spices. It's a lot more of a broader range. And that might have been a very long answer for you. So I'm sorry.

Hema: No, it's, it's fine. It's, you know, you're coming from, from the chef side of it with the, the nuances of the different spices. And I think it's really important that explanation because all over the Caribbean, we have the South Asian or Indian influences, it's morphed, right? And, and depending on what country you're going to, those influences may be mixed with the African influences or the Chinese or the, you know, European. And in Guyana specifically, you were talking about the South Asian influences, but there are also other cultures that ended up in Guyana that influenced what the food is like today. Yes?

Dev: Yes. Chinese, African, Portuguese. And of course we definitely have a European and the Amerindians that were already there. And that's really where the national dish comes from pepper pot as the Amerindians discovered cassareep, uh, which is the bitter cassava extract reduced. And, uh, but yeah, those, those, as far as I know, are the biggest, uh, biggest influences there from outside.

Hema: You have shared a lot of your travels recently, and I noticed that you went to Trinidad. You've shared some, uh, from Guyana and those are the two countries, oftentimes that people are like pitted against each other, in terms of food, because there is such a big Indo Caribbean population. I don't see a need for one being better than the other, frankly, whether you call it curry chicken or chicken curry, doesn't bother me. Um, but did you notice any differences in both the food and the culture from country to country? 

Dev: Anybody that follows me, anybody that watches the content from February from when I was in Trinidad. It's extremely clear to see that I had one of the best times of my life. I posted a lot of static reels, like a lot of videos, and I posted a lot of stories, and the stories are in highlights on my Instagram, so anybody can go back and see the experience that I have.

I was also very well looked after with Chef Jason Peru, Shaun from Foodie Nation, uh, and so on. The people that were looking, looking after me there. There were incredible similarities, as expected for me, between Guyana and Trinidad. One thing I noticed, and I'm very excited about this specific podcast and the type of questions that you're asking, because a lot of the things I'm telling you today, I have not been able to answer.

I do a lot of podcasts and interviews. But it's always a lot, a lot of times it's the same questions. You know, what inspires you? What's your signature dish? You know, a lot of them are recovery based. That's a whole other story, but this is actually really exciting because I get to say things to you that I haven't really get to say out in a public forum yet.

What I'm going to get to is this, in my experience, and again, this is not to upset any Guyanese people, but I found that in Trinidad, overall, the Indians there were a little bit more connected to the roots back home in India than what I see in Guyana. That's not a jab at any Guyanese. Guyanese, many of them are very connected.

The Indian community, they're very connected back to South Asia. But I think it makes sense, doesn't it? Trinidad's population is twice the amount of Guyana, right? I don't know the nitty gritty of what boat came from where to Trinidad and what went to Guyana. But there's more people. It's the same thing we were talking about before, about Guyanese food having a more limited menu as compared to India.

It's just less people, you know? Overall, that really has a big impact over a longer period of time. So, I noticed tons of similarities, um, obviously in the food. There's certain things that we have that are the same, that are different names. Great example. Breadnut curry, we just call it katahar, you guys call it chataigne.

Right? So, there's a lot of stuff like that. The menu is more broad and there's more range in Trinidad as well. What do I mean by that? Like, I mean, in Guyana, on the side of the road, you'll get bake and saltfish, uh, uh, fish and puri, aloo ball, pholourie, things like this. But we don't really have any sahina, which is my favorite thing that I had in Trinidad.

Sahina and sahina doubles are the best, like, my absolute favorite. I go crazy for it and stuff like that. So I found the menu to be a little bit more extensive. Also, we have like pickles in Guyana, but chow is a big thing and you have a much wider range of chow over there. So I found that the menu to be a little bit more extensive as compared to Guyana, but overall assimilated like this.

Yes, there's this long term rivalry between Trinidad and Guyana. It's a whole set of stupidness if you ask me, right? Chicken curry, curry chicken. Ultimately, it comes down to how you're using the word curry. Is it a noun or is it a verb? In which case, it's curried chicken or chicken curry. I don't know why people go back and forth, but I'm also guilty of stirring that pot, okay?

I'm also guilty of it because online we have a blast with with people. Um, but uh, tons of similarities and the accents very different. Right, so the accent of Guyana and Trinidad is obviously very different, um, but at the same time, like, assimilated like this, and I was looked after beautifully while I was in Trinidad.

My cousin Jason and I are already planning our trip for next February. I'm in Guyana all of September, I'm thinking of popping over for a few days to Trinidad as well. Going to D’Green Shed, Hot on D Spot, getting my sahina, and out of there. We'll see what happens, but we're already planning for next year.

I can't wait to go back.

Hema: The one thing about Trinidadian people is they're going to welcome you. And I'm sure if it's the same as when I go there, the first thing people ask you is, do you want something to eat?

Dev: Oh yeah,

Hema: You can’t go to somebody’s house without eating something. You could have just eaten the biggest meal possible, and they're still going to make you eat a little something by their house.

Dev: Absolutely. And in Guyana, that's the same thing, obviously, as well. But unfortunately, and in Trinidad as well, it's like, what are you drinking? Right? And I find that to be, I mean, that's a whole other conversation. I just celebrated three years continuous sobriety. You know, so. 

Hema: Congratulations 

Dev: Thank you so much. being in Guyana for all of March, it's, it's a tough culture to be around, you know, where I was there for wedding festivities and this and that.

And it's like, the first thing you do when you hook up with someone is it, what you drinking? Right. What are you going to drink? You know, beer, a shot, whatever it is. Trinidad can be, can be in some situations very much the same way. It's a part of the culture. And that’s a whole other podcast. Cause I'll get into generational trauma and my experiences and all that stuff.

But. I don't know if we have time for that today, but I just wanted to know.

Hema: I had a conversation with, Melissa from West Indian Diplomacy, and we were talking about, about the different generations and, and so way back when her parents were, or grandparents or great grandparents came over from India on the boats and the trauma that came from that. Um, that continued to be passed down, right? 

Dev: Could not, could not begin to imagine. I hit up a, I hit up a museum in London last year when I was there. I was cooking at Borough Market and my aunts and I and my mom, we went to a museum that documented slavery into the abolition of, abolition of slavery. Um, and then it started to talk about and document the indentured servantship And like, I saw pictures of how they lured people. I remember there was actually a specific photo. They had, it was black and white, there was a lady, probably late 1800s or sometime in the early 1900s. And she was, uh, it was an Indian woman. And she was all dressed up nice and she was covered in gold. And this is one of the photos that they used to kind of lure people onto the boats to leave home and go travel, you know, halfway across the world or however you want to call it to go abroad. So yeah, I guess I just wanted to share that. I couldn't imagine. I know a lot. I don't know what the living conditions were like, even getting to where you have to go and being stripped of, of, of, of identity and stuff like that.

Like, so, so this was actually a very challenging exhibit for me to walk through and for my, my family, my aunts and my uncles. Because they saw, they saw the living conditions, they saw, you know, the violations and stuff like that. It was very challenging. And it left me upset. I left there pissed off, actually, to be honest with you. So yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't begin to imagine.

Hema: No, I appreciate when you say that I haven't, you know, I haven't been to a museum like that, but as I'm uncovering more and more and learning more about both slavery and indentured servitude and the conditions and the stories that we were told as youngsters, and recognizing that a lot of them are not true. So when I was talking to Melissa, who is, who has the, you know, the petition to preserve records in, for some of the Caribbean countries that don't have the indentured servitude records preserved, and understanding that for a long time, it was believed or thought or shared that people from India went willingly. And then learning later on that that may not be the truth and some of them were coerced. Some may have gone willingly. Some may have been, you know, tricked. It is quite traumatizing.

Dev: And most of them ain't going back. You  know…

Hema: That time, that time in history, right, right after the abolition of slavery and then indentured servitude, there was a lot of trauma in those countries already. But I think, you know, as I look at all, all across the Caribbean, there was terrible conditions that brought people there, but they made it work, right?

They created their own culture in each country and it's now a different story. And although I don't want us to forget that history, I think we can also celebrate the culture that we have all over the Caribbean today.

Dev: And that's what I'm doing, for sure. I'm doing my best to showcase it, celebrate it, cherish it, highlight it. I'm doing all that. Definitely that's what the cookbook does, for sure, too.

 I get so many messages from from kids here, and like, from first generation, you know, individuals over here, where it's like and and from parents. Where they're like, we're so happy that you released this book and you're doing the work that you're doing because it's connecting our children to the recipes, traditions, and cultures of our parents and what we grew up with and our grandparents and stuff. And it's really exciting. So I just want to say that I'm very proud of that, too.

You know, you got like, parsad in here, and metemgee, and cookup rice, and pepper pot, and cheese rolls, and all of the bake and saltfish, all of that stuff's in here, right? And a lot, and I get a lot of messages, too, from people who had a Guyanese parent who is no longer here anymore. There's a lot of Indian Guyanese relationships out there, which is so beautiful.

I get a lot of messages from people being like, yo, my dad passed away when I was young and all the food that I loved growing up with, I have no more access to it and now I can make it and stuff like that. And that just gives me so much fulfillment.

Hema: I was talking to somebody else who was doing research into cookbooks from the Caribbean, like way, way past it. Right. And, and having this conversation about for a long time for Afro Caribbean, Indo Caribbean people, cookbooks were not a thing, right? Because it was just, you watched, you learned by doing, by being in the kitchen all the time. But I think we're in this era right now where there are a lot of people that aren't as connected and, and need a cookbook, right? They don't have these recipes orally passed down. And so they need something like what you're providing, which are stories, storytelling, recipes and ways to reconnect.

I was listening to another podcast and I wish I could remember which one it was, but there was a young girl, I want to say maybe in her 20s, on the podcast, Indo Caribbean. And she said that for a very long time, she didn't know how to identify herself as being Indo Caribbean. And she, she, I think I'm paraphrasing when she thought Indian and Caribbean were two very different things. And I think we have a lot of people out there, which you may see because they're contacting you who don't know how to identify. And food is one way of bringing everybody together, right. And helping them reconnect

Dev: Absolutely. I agree with you. I struggled with the identity as well, growing up, like, am I Indian? Am I South American? Am I West Indian? Am I Caribbean? Like, what am I? Still to this day, a lot of people too, a lot of people don't understand, why Guyana is, is Caribbean, right? And that's the other thing too, I go back and forth between Caribbean and Caribbean.

Someone asked me, like, Devan, what do you, we were on The Social, I was filming, uh, the television show last week, and they're like, Chef, what do you say, Caribbean or Caribbean? And I'm like, I don't really know which one I say, but that, you know, potato, potato, that's not, uh, tomato, tomato, that's not really, what we're talking about.

But, um, yeah, I struggled with it a little bit myself, to be honest with you. And regarding Guyana, I mean, for anybody listening, why is Guyana considered to be a Caribbean country? Geographically, it's not, but it's because of the culture that is exhibited in Guyana, which makes it a Caribbean country.

Someone posted a comment on a thing recently where it's like, Guyana's not Caribbean, it's in South America or something like that. Me eh got time for that, right? So I just I just left that where it was. You mentioned at the beginning of our conversation that sometimes I don't know if you meant to say that like, you didn't know where you fit in, but like maybe felt inferior at times, because, because

Hema: For me, growing up.

Dev: In this in this in the 70s and 80s, you mentioned?

Yeah, right. Well, I didn't have too much experience with that. Until kind of recently, like two occasions happened. And the first one struck me a lot. I was at the Toronto Food and Drink Show in Toronto, and I think it was three years ago, the first year out of COVID. And I had a lot of people come to see me.

I do live demos there too, but a lot of people came out to see me. And there was one girl. I don't even know if she'll ever hear this or know that I'm talking about her. But there was one girl. That was talking about like Guyanese or Guyana and this and that. And ultimately I can't remember the nitty gritty of what was said, like the exact verbatim.

She said something along the lines of like, oh, oh yeah, you come from us. You, you come from us. And it seemed very condescending at the time. It made me not feel very good about myself. It made me much lesser than, than that. And, and, and she, and it made me feel like she was kind of putting herself in this position of status and eliteness and stuff like that, the way that she said it.

And it really bothered me. And that was like the first time in my life that I was aware of this like, inferiority complex, or where do I fit in, or what is my identity supposed to be, kind of thing. Up until that point, I, I, maybe I didn't know how to process it, maybe nothing ever happened. Uh, but only one thing happened after that, um, you know, maybe a few months ago, another similar situation.

So, I mean, I would handle the situation differently now if it were to happen again.  I would definitely stand up for myself, speak up for myself. I mean, no one gets to choose where, or how, or under what circumstances they're born. And no one should be made to feel any lesser than anybody else. That's for sure.

Hema: No, uh, whole, wholeheartedly. Uh, and I'm going to go back to what you were talking about really quickly about why is Guyana or Suriname or any of these sort of mainland places, considered part of the Caribbean, and you said it very clearly. And I want to say that again, it's cultural, right? It is very much a cultural connection. It leads me to another question, and I see a lot of, you know, quibbling about this online and on social media where people say, I'll use myself as an example, my family is Trinidadian, but I was born in Toronto and raised in Toronto. And people say, I can't then claim my Trinidadian-ness because I am Canadian. And I say that's incorrect because if I can't, I am Canadian because I was born here and I was raised here and I have my Canadian ways, but I also. was very much raised in a Trinidadian household, and I caveat that by saying I don't have the experienc. of somebody that was raised in Trinidad. But if I am not Trinidadian and I can't claim that, I disagree. But what do you think?

Dev: I completely disagree. Another real time example for you, I was in Turks and Caicos a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago. Uh, and there's a Guyanese family there, that I, that I've become close with. There's a bunch of Guyanese people living in Turks and Caicos, considering it's not a very big, big place.

There's a, there's a Guyanese family there. You know, they came by the restaurant that I was, uh, that I was doing the menu development at, and, my friend, it was like, when it was her birthday. So she had friends in from, from Turks and Caicos and Miami and stuff like that. And there was a Guyanese lady there and the Guyanese lady was born in Guyana.

And then she's been living and she, she grew up in Turks, I think, and she's living in Miami now. So at the table, and this is not an egotistical thing, I don't mean to come off this way. There are not very many Guyanese in my opinion, who have not heard my name mentioned once or twice. Just for the amount and volume of work that I put into showcasing the culture.

It's very rare, it's rare that I find someone that has not heard the name Chef Dev. This girl's one of them, right? But she had heard through her friends in that circle that this chef's here and we're gonna go meet him and stuff like that. But she said, she's like, what part of Guyana are you from, right?

And I'm like, I was actually born in Toronto, born in Canada. So I said, oh, you're not Guyanese then? And I'm like, it really bothered me. It really bothered me. Because on one end, it's like, I don't want to like, huff and puff, and like, behave in a way where I'm coming off like, you know, a cocky like, brat, or egotistical, or entitled, or anything like that.

But this, and I don't want to have to rifle off all the things I've done, all the documentaries and shows, and the cook, I don't want to go through all this stuff that I've done to promote my culture. And stuff like that. So I didn't really even know how to handle that at that point. I get a lot of messages from people being like, Hey, I'm in Guyana, you wanna meet up?

And it's like, I don't live in Guyana, you know? I get a lot of those messages. But that really bothered me, right? When she said that, Oh, you ain't Guyanese. And I'm like, I wanna, I wanna be like, in that, in that moment, Devan wants to be like, I'm doing more for this culture than you will ever do in your lifetime, right? But at the end of the, at the end of the day, I don't know her personal story and I don't exactly know what she's doing. But in that moment, I got really upset and I got really defensive about it and all that, because just something that I believed so purely in from the deepest part of my being in soul, I felt like it was just kind of stripped from me for a few seconds by the words of someone else, which I should never let happen again.

Right. And it was a split second moment and I processed it and I let it pass. Uh, but, um, the way I promote the culture. People assume I was born over there.

Hema: Listen, I've heard, I've seen people assume that based on all of your Trini content, that you are, that you're Trinidadian.

Dev: I got that too

Hema: So.

Dev: Got that too.

Hema: I, I, I just think it's, you know, the embracing the culture and, and really being open to it is what comes through in, in your posts and your enthusiasm, right? It's not pretending to be something you're not. You're just having a great time and appreciating it and sharing that.

And that's what I really enjoy and really love, is that every, every person who watches your content can get a feel for what you're experiencing and that's important, right? If they're not there, they can experience it through your eyes. 

Dev: My hope is always to be genuine, be myself, find and exhibit my true authentic voice as much as possible. The feedback that I get is that it comes off that way. And I'm very grateful for that. I'm not trying to be anybody that I'm not, that's for sure.

Hema: I really, I really appreciate that, which is why I wanted to talk to you. A you're from Toronto, right? I've seen you all over my social feeds for a little while now, and I hear your name popping up over and over again and I really, I really do enjoy what you do because. You're not, I'm not really sure if I'm going to say this correctly, but what you're sharing is to me, a little bit of entertainment, a little bit of education, um, and a little bit of cooking knowledge. And all of those three really fit together really well.

Dev: Again, thank you. But again, not but. Don't say but, Devan. Thank you. Going back to the beginning of our conversation, um, I still kinda don't know what I'm doing, right? I always have a passion for teaching and sharing knowledge, almost as much as I have a passion for absorbing it, right? And it's like, I wanna have a nice mix of tips.

I want to have a nice piece of entertainment. I shared like a five and a half minute on, on my, on my struggles with, addiction and recovery. Like there's that realness in it. I just shared that a few days ago, right? Uh, you have cooking recipes, uh, through the stories you get, you get a lot of everything and stuff like that, working out, et cetera, et cetera, but I don't know, I, there, there's no real strategy behind it right now, if it comes off in, in a somewhat balanced way or that it all fits together, I'm very happy to hear that.

But I just share things that I think are going to, a lot of it, leave the world a better place. That's really the honest truth.

Hema: You've said this over and over again, directly and indirectly, when you're leading with your passion with your heart and with good intentions it feels like it's just unfolding as it should for you. And I'm, you know, I'm very happy for you.

Dev: Leading with mad love. That's, that's the whole thing.

Hema: As we sort of get into the, the tail end of this, in your book, if somebody is brand new and I'm just going to say Guyanese, not, Caribbean or Caribbean, however you want to say it. I also say both. If somebody is brand new. And they are like, okay, so I have nothing in my pantry. I don't know where to start. How do I stock my pantry? And how do I, what recipe do I start with? 

Dev: These are all very good questions. I thought you were going to ask me a more difficult question and as I thought you were going to ask me that question, I already started to think about how I was going to answer it. And I'm glad you didn't ask me that question, but now I've dug myself a hole and I need to, I have to reveal to you and everybody listening what that question is.

Hema: Yes, you do.

Dev: Yeah, so here we go. Vulnerability at its best. The question I thought you were going to ask me is someone new to cooking picks up the book and tries in this book to understand what the difference is between Guyana and India or the Caribbean and India. That's what I thought you were going to ask me.

Someone not, that's from neither of those countries, that's from neither of those cultures, opens this book and sees Indian recipes, but also hears about Guyana and sees Guyanese recipes how do they know, uh, how they differ? And, um, fortunately, uh, as I try to rifle my brain for an answer, we do talk a little bit about the story in here, but not in much detail throughout the introduction.

 Throughout the book you have different tidbits like this popular Guyanese needs dishes enjoyed across the Caribbean blah blah blah This is metemgee. Do you guys have metemgee in Trinidad?

Hema: We don't.

Dev: Okay, you can't you can't it's a it's a this is metemgee with duff and right beside it's how to prep cassava You know, I know you're very familiar, a lot of people will be very familiar with cassava.

Metemgee is just, you know, a bunch of root vegetables, starchy, starchy goodness in a coconut milk seasoned broth. A lot of the dishes in here and a lot of, you know, Guyanese dishes like Trinidadian dishes, they're there to satiate you before you go do labor. Right? They're supposed to fill you up for the workday, cook up rice, etc, etc.

So, but, uh, I have head notes in, in, in, in a lot of these recipes, in mostly all of them. And I talk about it a little bit in the introduction. Okay. So that's where I thought you were going with that. 

How to use this book, right? Where do you start? So I have a chapter here, this is how to use this book. This is right at the beginning of the book and then after this we have Chef Devan's East and West.

 So here we have Chef Devin's East and West Pantry Essentials. So here we have a lot of ingredients. Uh, culantro's in here as well, also known as bhandanya, also known as shado beni, you have cassareep in here, which is like, I'm known for pepper pot, so you got that tamarind sauce, tandoori masala, ghee, kashmiri chili powder, kasoori methi like we talked about before. All of those things are in here. So between the how to use this book, and between the pantry essentials, and then also, furthermore, in this recipe, we have descriptions of things, right, and substitutions.

So I have wiri wiri peppers in a lot of my recipes, so we have captions here that say wiri wiri chili peppers can be substituted with half the amount of scotch bonnet or habanero chili peppers. So I feel like, you know, anybody getting this book, I'm always talking about in my content, in my live demos, I'm always talking about do not be handcuffed to the recipes in the book.

I was talking to someone yesterday, they didn't have one ingredient, it was cassareep by the way, but they didn't have one ingredient. If you don't have one ingredient or two ingredients, like I don't want you running out of the house to go and get that ingredient. Use what you have at home or find a substitution.

If I have broccolini in one of these recipes, which I do, don't go out to buy it if you have everything else at home and you got bok choy or spinach in the fridge. Use that, right? You have kale, use whatever you have at home. I'm always very, uh, very adamant about that. But, sorry, which recipe do you start?

Yeah, I would say that you want to start with a simple one. Something that's very, very satiating. It comes from my mother. And it also, tells the story of how we, uh, how it ended up in Guyana a little bit. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Hema: I don't.

Dev:  It's a hard I, yeah, I'm not giving you much to work with. But it's my mom's recipe. And, uh, it's easy. It's a one pot wonder. It provides sustenance. It's great on cold nights. And it can be consumed at breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, midnight snack, anytime that you want in life, okay? Mom's Dhal.

So we have Dal, also known as split pea soup or lentil soup if you would. Guyanese use split yellow peas, I believe in Trinidad, same thing.

Mom's Dhal is something that I would recommend starting with. We talk about how this dish, my brother Jai and I would tear up fresh roti or even stale roti. And you put it into a bowl of dhal and you just dunk it and you let it soak as much as you want before putting it into your mouth. Oh my god. I held an event recently for media and influencers in Toronto, 30 of them, and we had different experiences outlining the inspirations behind the book.

One was my brother, one was my grandmother and temple, one was travel, one was mum. And for mum's segment, for mum's fourth experience, she, she made roti live for the crowd and then we had bowls of dhal for the roti and the dhal. Never in a million years did I ever think at an event that I'm hosting I would serve torn up roti in a bowl of dhal.

But it made sense for what we were trying to execute there. There was no fancy plating. There was no tweezers. You know, there was nothing really fine dining anywhere remotely about, but it worked for that. The fifth experience, by the way, was Guyana and beyond. That's another conversation to talk about that event, but you would have loved something like that.

So yeah, anybody out there, um, Mad Love is a bestseller in three categories on Amazon Canada. I think I mentioned that before, but I just checked today when someone told me, did you know, by the way, on Instagram, like, did you know, by the way, your book is blah, blah, blah. So, uh, that's top of mind, fresh of mind.

You can get it. All over the place and, uh, start with mom's dhal. And then you'll understand why mom is such a huge influence to me. Um, can I show you one more thing while I have you?

Hema: You can. While you're looking for that, rice and dhal and bhaji is like a dish that I ate I don't know how many times growing up. On the, on the... Growing up, we had one day of the week where it was vegetarian, right? There was no meat in the house and rice and dhal and bhaji is a thing. As you were talking about substitutions and don't like fret if you don't have a single ingredient, I want to say with a lot of Trinidadian dishes, Guyanese dishes, Jamaican, wherever. When you're cooking in the kitchen without a recipe and you're learning from a grandmother or a mother, every family has a slight nuance in how they make a dish. And there are changes that happen based on what is available in your kitchen. And so when Chef says, don't worry if you don't have broccolini, if I was cooking in the kitchen with my grandmother or my mother, if we didn't have broccolini. That's not a big deal. You're going to figure it out. So that's how people would be authentically cooking. And so it's not going against how it would be cooked in a Caribbean kitchen.

Dev: I'm glad to hear that. I'm, I'm very happy you said that furthermore to what I was saying before is like, I always encourage people to reach to the back of the produce drawer. What is available at your local market? I have people buying this book in Germany, Mexico, like all over the place. Right. So you're obviously not going to be able to find everything.

Um, one person's in Edmonton, you're like Devan. Cassareep on, cassareep on, on Amazon's like 55 bucks Canadian. Like I don't expect her to buy it. She found that, you know, molasses and soy sauce and stuff can create a similar flavor. And in my head, it kind of makes sense. Uh, but I mean. Yeah, I don't want anybody to have to go out of their way.

Hema: Or think they can't make it because they don't have a single ingredient.

Dev: Right. This is the bread section. My mom is here. This same photo was just used in the National Post. I'm so grateful. I've done Forbes, National Post, House and Home Magazine, did a big four page spread, Elle Magazine. It's, it's, it's a CBC Life, etc, etc. So we have mom's roti in the book, but check out, check out what's really exciting.

This is what I'm trying to get to is for all the people out there that can't make roti, we've included mom's hands, step by step. Every single step on how to make it right from the beginning, right to the end where you're clapping it. Right. So there's a lot of really cool fun stuff in this cookbook hardcover and um, yeah, big flavours made to share from South Asia to the West Indies.

Hema: I love it. I love it. That is, and those step by steps are really important for people to see what it's supposed to look like.

Uh, and, and Dev, I'm going to, I'm going to confess something to you right here, right now. I've never once in my life made roti from scratch, any kind of roti from scratch. And you know, there are several different kinds, right? I've not made a single one. So, and fry bake is one of my favorite things to eat, but I've never made it myself.

Dev: It's, it's not hard and I'm sure there's like a fear of the unknown. You just have to do it and commit to it and it may not turn out very well the first time, or it may and may not the second time, but you need to keep doing it. Um, I'd like to gently and kindly challenge you to make some type of flatbread in the near future.

Hema: I will. I will. I will, you know, it's it's funny and we're rounding out the time. But I will say we've we've sort of alluded to this. I've talked about this, but, um, I feel like for a long time growing up here in Canada and having that sort of what I call my double life and and…you know, trying to avoid the racism by assimilating, which I probably did more than I should have, but later in life, understanding and really embracing my culture is what led me to the position that I'm in today with this podcast and learning a little bit more.

So I have a little bit of catch up, you know, I, I make a really good pelau in my opinion. But my pelau is not necessarily going to be the same as, you know, my neighbors or somebody else's in the way they, the way like it, or my macaroni pie is not going to be the same as everybody else's, but that's okay because I think there's leeway in cooking and enjoying, and there's so much enjoyment of just being in the kitchen, right? And experimenting.

Dev: It's, and it's the same thing in Guyana and it's the same thing in India. You go to India, every household has a different type of garam masala, right? They, one house is using 11 spices, one house is using 13. One house is using cinnamon, one house is not kind of thing, right? So the same thing goes to Trinidad and Guyana.

Uh, you're using what you have at home. And, and what I find too with, with Guyanese and Trinidadians is people like to be known for stuff. So they like to do some, one thing a little bit different to make it stand out. There's only so much chow mein you can eat, right? But you know, maybe someone's putting something special in it to make it pop.

One of the most popular restaurants to eat in Guyana, I'm not going to mention where it is, um, but they're famous for, I'm not even going to mention what type of curry, but they're famous for curry, right? And I'm tasting this thing, and I'm like, how has this person won all these awards, and how have they become so popular?

And I'm tasting like, warm, earthy spices, like cinnamon, clove, and stuff like that, and that's not common for curry in Guyana, but it's that little thing that just makes it stand out a little bit, right? So, further, it's what we're saying is, you know, don't be, uh, don't be afraid to step out of your comfort zone a little bit at home and maybe, you know, go off in another direction a little bit, you know, based on what you have in your experiences.

Hema: Yeah. I mean, that's, that's what our ancestors did, right?

They came from different countries and they assimilated and they made the recipes based on what was available in their new home, their new, the new countries. And so that's okay. 

We are at time, but before we go, what are you working on? Next, what's coming up for you?

Dev: I appreciate you asking, uh, and thank you again for having me. It's been wonderful. Again, I just want to reiterate that it's really refreshing to answer some of the questions that you had for me, because I haven't really been able to talk about this stuff on any other platform. So thank you. And thank you to everyone.

Thank you to everyone listening. Cookbook is everything right now. Um, I'm back to Turks and Caicos soon. I mentioned Dallas, LA, then I'm in Boston, back in Guyana all of September, trying to go to Trinidad as well. Uh, working with the Tourism Board again to do a lot of fun, exciting stuff to showcase the culture and, and bring more awareness to it.

But really, I gotta be honest with you, everything right now is cookbook, cookbook, cookbook. I did two TV shows last week. I have radio tomorrow and the day after, and then I'm doing pop ups literally all over the world. I'll be popping up in Florida. Got a huge Caribbean community there, especially Guyanese.

So I have three pop ups there in July. I have three pop ups last week of July in New York. Um, and then pop ups will be announced lots more in Toronto and stuff like that and really right now is to really focus and push the cookbook as much as possible. It's what's, it's what's right front and center right now and it's hot.

So this is where my focus is going. We have other projects in the work. I don't stop. People ask me if I sleep and I do sleep. For sure I do. Uh, but there's a lot of exciting stuff coming and I'll be posting on social media at Chef Devan, D E V A N. That's on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, Chef Devan, Chef Devan Official on YouTube and Chef Devan Rajkumar on Facebook.

Hema: Excellent And we will add all the links in the show notes and tag you in all of the video clips. We'll also add your website, and people can sort of find out everything they need to know about what you're working on. We'll add a link to your book as well.

Chef, given all that you have going on and you're in the middle of cookbook promotions, I really appreciate you taking the time.

It's been lovely having you on. I wish we could have more time to talk about things, but I'll just be posting questions on your socials and you can answer that way.

Dev: I got you and I'd be honoured to do this again in the, in the future.

Hema: Thank you so much.

Dev: Thank you.

Hema: ​Thanks for listening to today's bonus episode of The Moreish Podcast. You can find us on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube at The Moreish Podcast. We'll see you next week for another bonus episode, and stay tuned for information about season two.

Resources:

Connect with Devan Rajkumar on his website, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube

Mad Love Cookbook

The Food Dudes

Chef Dev on CityLine

Foodie Nation

Chef Jason Peru
The Social