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 touch.

Restaurateur Riyaz Amlani was one of the first to flag off the trend when he included his mum's mutton dhansak on the Social menu at Colaba. For him, the tenderness of the meat is the defining element of the dish - that precise bone to meat ratio, the way the Parsis like it. He felt his mother's rendition of the dish ticked all the right boxes which is why he put it on the menu. We bring you more such kitchen stories.

Father's day with pork and red rice Ling's Pavilion, Colaba
Of the 500 dishes that have been on the Ling's 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. "It's particularly close to my heart as I make it the way my father and grandfather used to," says the 67-year-old. The specialty of this dish is that the red rice melts as the pork gets cooked. "This dish is slow-cooked over an hour-and-a-half. The gluten makes it nice and thick. The water from the meat comes out and you cook in that," he says.

Baba Ling makes the dish the way his father and grandfather used to. Pic/Bipin Kokate

Ling 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, "There's one more thing I learnt from my father - it is to accept when you make a mistake. Ego is not good for a chef, you'll never learn then."

Stew pork with bean curd and rock vegetables with red rice Rs 550

The wife's secret idli recipe Thyme, Powai
In the 21 years that restaurateur Nityanand Shetty and his wife Seema have been married, not a Sunday has gone by when the family hasn't 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 Shetty's café-cum-lounge Thyme. "Dunk it into the chutney and have a bite.

Nityanand Shetty and wife Seema relish a plateful of the latter's Sunday specialty, gulliyappas. Pics/Sameer Markande

You won't 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 won't find gulliyappas anywhere."

Gulliyappa Rs 225

Mummy's kheer with a dash of saffron Kong Poush, Oshiwara
As 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 dave

Mattoo, 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 - it involves the raw rice being washed and then cooked in milk on a slow flame for almost 45 minutes to an hour.

"You 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 smile.

Kong Kheer Rs 100

Grandma's laddoos for diabetic son 29, Kemp's Corner
When Nishek Jain decided to open 29, he had one wish - 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 says.

Nishek Jain's sugar-free laddoos are made with jaggery. Pics/ Datta Kumbhar

Without any trials, the dish was introduced at the launch. "I had no intention of including it on the menu because of the costs involved - each laddoo came to '80, which didn't make it commercially feasible." But when he saw how his father couldn't stop at one, Jain changed his mind. "He insisted that I put it on the menu. Called the Kesar Malai Ke Laddo, it's a cross between a sandesh and malai peda. "It's normally served cold." he says, adding, that the laddoo got him experimenting with jaggery. "My grandma would always complain that we city bred people don't use enough jaggery in our food. I'm trying to change that," he says.

Kesar Malai Ke Laddoo Rs 100