Parsis and Iranis are the two communities that fall under the Zoroastrian religion. But, their cuisine falls under only one religion, i.e., Sheer Deliciousness

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https://truetravelandfoodblog.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/parsi-and-irani-food-trails-of-pune/

Parsi and Irani Food Trails of Pune truetravelandfoodblog.wordpress.com Parsis and Iranis are the two communities that fall under the Zoroastrian religion. But, their cuisine falls under only one religion, i.e., Sheer Deliciousness

A Parsi talks about the tradition of tea in their community, shares a recipe, shows off a family heirloom and gets us talking with 90 year old Nergis about chai times from a bygone era. Sweet!

This is a video from Chai with Lakshmi, India’s first award-winning online talk show.

Dar Ni Pori or Dar ni Poli is a Pastry stuffed with a Sweet Lentil Filling

A favourite tea time snack enjoyed by Parsis all over the world!

Dar in Pori is typically made from Toor Dal a lentil (also called split pigeon peas)
In my version of this delectable treat I have used a short cut method of making it with canned chickpeas!

Ingredients

Pastry
2 Cups of Maida or Refined Flour
6/7 cubes of cold butter cut in cubes
Ice cold water
A little melted Ghee to brush on the pastry
A dash of rose water

For the filling
2 cans of drained chickpeas mashed ( I used a food processor)
1/2 a cut of chopped nuts and dried fruits ( I used pistachios, almonds and cranberries )
Optional nuts are chironji or charoli  and fruits are raisins
2 tsp rose water
3/4 cup jaggery ( or  you can use sugar)

Method
Measure the flour

Sift it

Add the butter cubes

Add iced water and rose water

Rub the butter and water in the flour

Make a smooth dough and portion it in small balls
Cover the balls with a damp towel and let them rest

Filling

Drain 2 cans of chick peas

Chop up fruts and nuts

Add the mashed chickpeas , a little ghee, jaggery and the fruit and nuts to a thick bottomed pan
Add a couple of spoons of  rose water

Cool the filling then make portions

Flatten on portion of the pasty and put the filling in it

Cover the filling in the pasty and shape it like a round disc

Brush with a little melted ghee

Preheat oven to 180 C and put 2 poris in a baking tray lined with foil(brush the foil with little ghee before putting the poris to bake) and cook for 10 to 15 minutes until golden brown on both side

Let the poris cool down

Cut and serve with tea!

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Posted By Aban to My Food and Recipes at 3/24/2018 11:33:00 AM

COMMUNITY KITCHENS

City-based software tester and home chef Rashna Engineer tells us about growing up in Ahmedabad, where she learnt how to cook the centerpiece of a Sunday Parsi lunch: Dhansak

A meal of dhansak and rice easily takes about three hours to cook. The mutton needs to be marinated for about an hour in ginger-garlic paste, red chilli paste and salt, and we’re not even counting the four hours of soaking time needed for the three kinds of dals that go into the dish. The caramelised rice that dhansak is served with needs one’s full attention — a goopy pot of rice can send your appetite straight to hell.

IT professional and home chef Rashna Engineer remembers that her mother, a school teacher who taught Maths and Science at Mount Carmel High School in Ahmedabad, had patience for her family’s dhansak cravings only on a Sunday. “She had to leave home early in the morning every day,” recalls the 46-year-old, “But I don’t remember a Sunday when dhansak was not cooked at our home in Shahibaug.” Along with caramelised rice, dhansak is also served with a salad of finely chopped onion and tomatoes, with a dash of lemon, and garnished with coriander leaves.

By the time she was 16, Engineer had learnt how to make a luscious dhansak, which is also one of the most popular dishes on Rashna’s Parsi Kitchen’s menu, a food service that she launched with her husband, Percy, in 2015. “My husband does the marination of the meat and I do the final tadka to the dal,” says Rashna. Percy, 47, who also worked in the IT industry as a system administrator, got his culinary training a decade ago during a three-month stint in Tokyo. “I was teaching him how to cook on Skype,” says Rashna, laughing at the memory. “All those teppanyaki carts in Tokyo were great and there’s a lot of non-vegetarian food there, but I couldn’t eat out every day. I learnt all the cooking I know from Rashna. Cooking is an essential survival skill.” Their 15-year-old daughter Perzeen, who wants to study hotel management, is happy to have inherited recipes from both her grandmothers. “She is a complete bawa and loves her food,” says Percy.

Every household makes dhansak differently, he adds. “Some like it with a pinch of jaggery, some add a lot more jeero (cumin seed), some add more dhano (coriander seed) and some don’t like it with methi (fenugreek leaves).” But there are few that can rival the dhansak made by the Engineers — silken bits of brinjal, a hint of sweet pumpkin, a note of bitter from the fenugreek leaves and some tamarind for a quick sour punch are flavours that seep into the thick dal and succulent pieces of meat. Like Percy says, there’s only one thing left to do after a dhansak lunch. “You have to sleep. You can’t move.”

Dhansak with caramelised rice

What you need

SERVES – 2 TO 3
250 gms Tur Dal
50 gms Masoor Dal
50 gms Moong Dal
250 gms Rice
500 gms Mutton
1 Potato, medium-sized
3 Onions, medium-sized
2 Tomatoes, medium-sized Brinjal, small
½ cup Pumpkin
20 gms Methi / Kasuri Methi
20 grams Coriander
2 tsp Ginger-garlic paste
2 tsp Red Chilli Garlic & cumin paste
1 tsp Dhano-jeero powder (Coriander-cumin seed powder)
1 tsp Parsi Sambhar (Home made/Mangal brand masala)
2 tsp Dhansak masala (Home made/Mangal brand masala)
1 tsp Chilli powder
½ tsp Turmeric powder
1 tsp Jaggery (optional)
1 tsp Tamarind pulp (optional)
3 tsp Oil
2 tsp Ghee
2 tsp Salt
1.5 ltr Water

How to make it

FOR DAL

■ Wash and soak dal for 4 to 5 hours.

■ Wash mutton and then marinate with ginger garlic paste, red chilli paste and salt to taste.

■ In a pressure cooker add dal, peel and cut potato, brinjal, pumpkin, methi, turmeric powder, ½ tsp chilli powder,
1 tsp dhansak masala, salt and 750 ml of water. Pressure cook for 20-25 minutes.

■ In a pan, add 2 ½ chopped onions and stir fry in oil for 10 mins

■ Then add ginger-garlic paste, red chilli paste and stir for a while.

■ Add ghee, 2 finely chopped tomatoes and continue to stir.

■ Add all above mentioned masala and stir for another five minutes.

■ Add mutton and continue to cook for 10-15 minutes.

■ Add jaggery, tamarind and cook.

■ Now add dal to this mixture and again pressure cook for 15-20 minutes.

FOR RICE

■ Heat a pan, add sugar and caramelise it. Then add ½ chopped onion to it and fry for a minute.

■ Stir for a while and add rice to it.

■ Add water, 1 tsp oil and salt. Steam the rice till required

█ I don’t remember a Sunday when dhansak was not cooked at our home in Shahibaug. My brother demanded that the dish be made every weekend

https://punemirror.indiatimes.com/entertainment/unwind/slow-cooking-in-shahibaug/articleshow/63419565.cms

Why people keep coming back to this 140-year-old institution.

Old is gold: Darius Dorabjee at the restaurant’s kitchen. (Source: Arul Horizon)

At 10.30 on a Tuesday morning, when we land up at the Dorabjee & Sons Restaurant in Camp, Pune, Darius Dorabjee is in the kitchen fretting over the mutton biryani he has just made — he wants it quickly off the chulha lest it is overcooked. He is also shooting off instructions to the staff, who are moving the food from the oversized kitchen to the large pantry. Business begins at 11.30 am — as it has for the past 140 years.

His great-grandfather, Sorabjee Dorabjee, started the restaurant in 1878. Back then, the Pune Cantonment area had one place to eat out, El Moretos, an Italian restaurant and bar, meant only for British officers and their families. “It had a strictly no-Indians policy. My grandfather seized the opportunity. He took up three adjoining houses on rent and started a bun-maska and chai stall. Soon, customers demanded he open a restaurant. In those days, Poona’s moneyed class had no restaurant to go to. That’s how Dorabjee & Sons restaurant started. Since my great grandfather knew only how to make Parsi food and we had no cooks or help, the restaurant automatically started serving only Parsi food,” says Darius, the 47-year-old fourth-generation owner, or “working partner” as he puts it, since the family is quite big and all members are “shareholders” in the restaurant.

Back then, the family bought a house across the road, so the women of the family could grind masalas at home and sift the rice, while the men cooked in the restaurant. “The women still don’t cook, the men do the cooking. Our entire family eats all meals at the restaurant till today. See, that’s how good the women have it,” says Darius with a laugh.

Sometime in the 1950s, folding metal chairs and wooden tables were brought in — until then, patrons sat on the floor and ate. A photo of a young Bal Thackeray in his early teens eating at the restaurant, seated cross-legged on the floor with his family, is a reminder of that era. Today, marble-top tables and plastic chairs are used but that is probably the only change the restaurant has seen in the last one-and-a-half century. “We are pretty archaic in our ways and we are proud of it. Our customers love it, they ask us never to change. I am a lazy fellow, so I am happy to oblige,” says Darius.

The food is still cooked on chulhas and the masalas are still added by a family member. Darius, who has manned the kitchen since he was 15 (when he was asked by his late father, Marzaban, to work for pocket money), says there has never been a day when a family member wasn’t in the kitchen. The menu has withstood change as well — it ranges from chicken and mutton pulao or biryani to dhansak, salli boti, farcha (chicken fried in eggs) and akuri on toast for breakfast, and desserts like lagan nu custard. In fact, the restaurant remains one of the few places in Pune to serve Ardeshir raspberry soda drinks, a legacy fast fading out.

But the prices have changed. The menus of the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s still occupies pride of place on the “wall of fame” at the restaurant entry. The 1940s menu has mutton chilly fry priced at two annas, today it is Rs 250. Back then, the chicken items were priced double that of mutton, the latter used to be the “poor man’s food”.

“A young man once came in and said that his father, a retired defence officer, wanted to meet me. He had the 1940s menu, but he lived in Chandigarh and would give it only to me. So I packed food and went to meet him. He gave it to me and told me so many stories of his association with us,” recalls Darius.

Spend an hour at the restaurant and it’ll be clear that it is this “association” with regulars which is at the heart of Dorabjee & Sons. From 80-year-olds throwing birthdays for the grandchildren at the restaurant, to a 96-year-old customer bringing his 94-old-wife on a bi-weekly date, these are the stories that make the restaurant a true icon of the old city of Poona.

http://indianexpress.com/article/express-sunday-eye/families-in-food-a-taste-of-old-poona-5093317/