Mom’s Homemade stuffed buns

Its only befitting to follow the last post that was on Mother’s Day with a recipe from my mom’s repertoire. In my last post, I did not mention how great a cook she is. I did not forget, but for once I did not want it to be about her cooking. But there is no doubt that she is an amazing cook.

My mom never cooked before marriage, and all that she learnt was after marriage. With a foodie for a husband and a few trusted Indian Tarla Dala books, and a willingness to always experiment new dishes, she became famous for her cooking. As a result my dad grew a truck tyre for a stomach and her children became gourmands (or well more aptly gluttons).

I have in the past shared her famous date cake recipe. Believe me when I say, this is one recipe you should always have with you. My sister-in-law made it recently for her friends and she said out of all the things she made, the date cake was the star. And she and I both get that every time we make it.

My mom’s homemade chocolate balls that she sent to my hostel are the reason why I was always in the good books of my hostel seniors. It’s only half true when they say a way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I think it holds for everyone.

This recipe for stuffed mushroom homemade buns is also one that she made quite often when my brother and I were kids. It was actually handed to her by my father’s aunt who is a canadian and an amazing baker.

I am sharing the mushroom version of the stuffed buns but sometimes she would stuff the buns with keema (minced lamb meat). But mostly, mom would always stuff half with keema and half with mushrooms.

Mom always used fresh yeast and the long hours that the dough would sit, would lead to this really yeasty flavour in the dough. I still have a recollection of the first few times she made these buns. I have this picture in my mind of how our kitchen looked. Dad was posted at the Hindan Air Force Base which is about an hour’s drive from Delhi. The refrigerator was in this type of hallway that led to the kitchen, and to the right of the refrigerator was the pantry that always had nestle toll house chocolate chips, and mama’s nice pots and pans, which she never used, because she thought they will get spoilt. She had picked them up from US when Dad had come here for a course and since she did not know when we would get a chance to come back to US for new pots and pans, she did not want to spoil the ones she had. The only times those pots and pans came out were when Dad cooked spaghetti sauce. I should share the recipe for the spaghetti sauce some day. We still request him to make it when we go home.

It was fun making these buns at my own house, because each step took me back to those days. They were happy days, not that these present ones aren’t, but Hindan still tops my list of favorite places and one of the best times of my life.

I managed to take step by step photos of making the buns . Anyway, I really wanted to do a video, but making one working alone is kind of difficult. Maybe its time for V to get his hands dirty so that he can do the cooking and I can shoot him.

The only prob with these step by step photos is that I forgot to take the photos after the rise of the bread and the whole filling of the buns. I think I got too excited to make my mom’s recipe in my own kitchen. But since I had put in so much of effort for the rest of the pictures, I am posting half of the steps. The stuffing isn’t too difficult to do though. But make sure you stuff them well to get a good end result ratio of filling to bread in your bun (balls and buns are two words I can not NOT write and go on a tangent- does anybody else do this?).

You can also put cheese in the filling. Since I made these for just V and myself, I chose not to add cheese, but feel free to. I don’t see how that wouldn’t work!

My mom used to top the buns with sesame seeds. I chose to add a few hemp seeds as well, just for the little extra nutrition.