Homeward bound

While nothing can replace the comfort of good old home food what comes as a close second are home recipes given a restaurant twist City chefs are digging into family specialties that shaped their childhood adding them on their menu with a dash of a personal touchRestaurateur Riyaz Amlani was one of the first to flag off the trend when he included his mums mutton dhansak on the Social menu at Colaba For him the tenderness of the meat is the defining element of the dish mdash that precise bone to meat ratio the way the Parsis like it He felt his mothers rendition of the dish ticked all the right boxes which is why he put it on the menu We bring you more such kitchen storiesFathers day with pork and red rice Lings Pavilion ColabaOf the 500 dishes that have been on the Lings Pavilion menu since 1945 most are inspired by what owner Baba Ling grew up on The pork and red rice however comes straight from his childhood home in Canton in southern China Its particularly close to my heart as I make it the way my father and grandfather used to says the 67yearold The specialty of this dish is that the red rice melts as the pork gets cooked This dish is slowcooked over an hourandahalf The gluten makes it nice and thick The water from the meat comes out and you cook in that he saysBaba Ling makes the dish the way his father and grandfather used to PicBipin KokateLing started cooking at the age of eight By then I had already learnt most of the dishes watching my father cook When I made this dish for the first time he spoke to me about the feel of the stew In his words it means knowing when your meat is cooked and your stew is perfect And there is no method or time you have to follow You just have to feel it I call it the art of the stew He continues Theres one more thing I learnt from my father mdash it is to accept when you make a mistake Ego is not good for a chef youll never learn thenStew pork with bean curd and rock vegetables with red rice Rs 550The wifes secret idli recipe Thyme PowaiIn the 21 years that restaurateur Nityanand Shetty and his wife Seema have been married not a Sunday has gone by when the family hasnt gorged on guliyappas a Mangalorean breakfast dish Once we sample a plateful of it we get what the fuss is all about The little roundels which resemble mini idlis are served on a banana leaf or a brass plate with a bowl of coconut chutney and delicious chicken sukka gravy at Shettys cafeacutecumlounge Thyme Dunk it into the chutney and have a biteNityanand Shetty and wife Seema relish a plateful of the latterrsquos Sunday specialty gulliyappas PicsSameer MarkandeYou wont be able to stop All my nephews nieces love it he tells us Letting out her secret his wife Seema says I tweak the appam batter and prepare idlis with it which we have with chicken curry Spattered with mustard seeds they are crispy on the edges and soft in the centre Gulliyappas taste nothing like idlis despite being made from the same core batter This is because when we grind urad dal and dosa rice to ensure the texture is coarse The batter is left to ferment overnight The more it ferments the better it tastes says Seema Her husband adds They are multiple variations of idlis and dosas but you wont find gulliyappas anywhereGulliyappa Rs 225Mummys kheer with a dash of saffron Kong Poush OshiwaraAs you step inside the quaint interiors of Kong Poush the waft of kahwa is pleasantly overwhelming As a Kashmiri folk tune faintly plays in the background chef and owner Sunil Mattoo says I wanted to make this space feel like a quintessential Kashmiri home Sunil Mattoo learnt to make Kong Kheer from his mother Pics Nimesh daveMattoo who took to cooking as a teenager picked up the Kong Kheer saffron kheer recipe from his grandmother and mother Mattoo grew up in a joint family in Srinagar and this sweet dish was only prepared during festivals like Ashtami and Navratri The prep is tedious mdash it involves the raw rice being washed and then cooked in milk on a slow flame for almost 45 minutes to an hourYou have to constantly stir and wait till the rice grains break into two and blend into the milk Sugar is added in the end Mattoo says The key ingredient saffron is what adds the flavour Even today whenever his mother visits him in Mumbai she prepares it for the family At 75 she prepares it better than I do he says with a smileKong Kheer Rs 100Grandmas laddoos for diabetic son 29 Kemps CornerWhen Nishek Jain decided to open 29 he had one wish mdash that his father a diabetic should not leave his restaurant without trying a sweet dish We had to find a way I spoke to my grandma and she suggested a recipe using paneer kesar saffron threads malai pistachio cardamom and jaggery which she used to prepare for the family because it was a healthy option he saysNishek Jains sugarfree laddoos are made with jaggery Pics Datta KumbharWithout any trials the dish was introduced at the launch I had no intention of including it on the menu because of the costs involved mdash each laddoo came to 80 which didnt make it commercially feasible But when he saw how his father couldnt stop at one Jain changed his mind He insisted that I put it on the menu Called the Kesar Malai Ke Laddo its a cross between a sandesh and malai peda Its normally served cold he says adding that the laddoo got him experimenting with jaggery My grandma would always complain that we city bred people dont use enough jaggery in our food Im trying to change that he saysKesar Malai Ke Laddoo Rs 100