If you pick up Rambutan, Cynthia Shanmugalingam’s debut cookbook expecting to rush straight to the recipes of gorgeous Sri Lankan fare, you are going to have to pause. There’s no ‘jump to recipe’ button here, and that’s a good thing too. The recipes — peppered with charming stories and pictures of family gatherings, dinner tables, and picturesque locales borrowed from family albums — have been carefully put together by Cynthia, who is all set to open a restaurant in London in October. This, after running a restaurant incubator from 2013, and moving on to cook her way through pop ups at Asma Khan’s Darjeeling Express, Palm Heights in the Cayman Islands, and Quo Vadis in London since 2019.
In Rambutan, you will learn why her mother can’t cook without curry leaves, how Cynthia overcame the fear of cracking coconuts, and relive her childhood memories of her father, a strict disciplinarian, bringing home a bucket of fried chicken on the last day of summer exams. You will also learn of her father’s journey from being tortured and brutally beaten as a shop boy to the University of Ceylon, and eventually to London, and her mother’s struggles as an immigrant
