Meeting Reza Mahammad is like being ambushed by a cross between Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and Freddie Mercury. I mean this in a good way. Precisely three minutes after I arrive at his house, he's twirling me around his kitchen and serenading me with plans for the latest refit of his restaurant, the Star of India.

'It's shimmer, shimmer, shimmer, darling!' he says, giggling. 'Horsehair panels, polished plaster work, shimmery banquettes. Antique mirrors, crystals, beads. All very touchy-feely.'

Today he's cooking lunch from his new cook book Rice, Spice and All Things Nice. It's a mixture of recipes from the restaurant along with family dishes handed down through the generations, all threaded together with Reza's no-nonsense, gossipy commentary. ('Don't despair if you haven't got all the spices. Improvise.') It's an attempt, he says, to demystify Indian cooking.

'More and more people know how Indian food should taste because they've been travelling, but they don't know how to cook it. They're either intimidated or they bung everything in at once. There's a gentle art to Indian cooking but it doesn't have to be labour-intensive. If you get everything lined up and ready, it's easy.'

Reza lives in a comfortable Victorian house in west London. The style is an easy mix of Eastern and Western. The large airy kitchen has glass doors leading out on to a pretty patio garden. The walls in the living room are crammed with modern abstract paintings which he collects; the floor is covered in kilim rugs. Everywhere you look there are model elephants picked up on travels in India. A framed fax from Tracey Emin sits on the top of the upstairs loo cistern.

Downstairs, everything is ready for lunch. He scoots about the kitchen in his socks, cooing over a bowl of fresh dates, pouring glasses of champagne. An earthy-looking lamb-and-lentil dish called Haleem, popular during Ramadan, is quietly simmering on the stove. Lamb and potato cutlets, as smooth and round as pebbles, are about to be fried. A coconut, cucumber, beansprout and coriander-leaf salad sits to one side. 'Just look at that salad! Gorgeous! Heaven!' he says, tossing it with his fingers.

Reza inherited the Star - as it's called by its South Kensington regulars - 27 years ago. This was long before the current renaissance of Indian restaurants, back when the typical curry house still meant chicken tikka the colour of Belisha Beacons and tablecloths marbled with lager stains.

The business had belonged to his father, Sheik Mahammad, and Reza, the eldest son, who'd been sent to boarding school in India, wanted nothing to do with it. Rather, the shy 17-year-old dreamt of studying art or music. But when his father died suddenly of a heart attack, Reza was called upon to take over the business.

'It changed my life completely. The business hadn't meant anything to me up until that point. I came back to a flock-wallpapered Indian restaurant ...' he says, disdainfully, looking as if he's just bitten into an indigestible cardamom pod. 'I had no idea what to do or how to run a restaurant.'

Did he think about rebelling?

'There was no choice. It was a family business. My father had arrived here in 1937 and we had been brought up on stories of how hard he used to work - tales of how he'd have to wait at the docks for the boats carrying the spices to come in. There was an obligation to continue what my father had left behind. It was a duty.'

While he fries the cutlets - 'The oil must be hot, hot, hot! That's where people go wrong!' - he remembers how he revamped his father's restaurant. Out went the wallpaper, in came a tented ceiling and trompe l'oeil wall decorations. 'It was from flock to baroque!' he says squealing with glee. 'A cross between a Zeffirelli production and the Sistine Chapel.'

His mother, Kulsum, was horrified. 'But I said to her: "Who is running this restaurant. You or me?" People thought I was making a terrible mistake but actually it was the best thing I did.'

A seasonal menu was introduced, which experimented with new, lighter flavours and put a spin on the old traditional classics. Colourings and additives were banned. The restaurant critic Fay Maschler, who knows her cumin from her coriander, not least because she was born in India, declared herself a fan. Then the celebrity clients started to queue up - Michael Hutchence introduced Kylie Minogue to the Star; Eighties bands like Curiosity Killed the Cat were regulars. These days it still draws a celebrity crowd - Daniel Day Lewis, Hugh Grant, Art Malik and Robert Downey Junior are regulars. 'It's for anyone and everyone,' says Reza, modestly.

He fell in love with Indian cuisine in the holidays when he stayed with his extended family in the Western Ghats in India. The food at boarding school was vile - 'Breakfast: cold fried eggs, watery lentils, stale bread, rancid butter. Lunch: bland curry, stodgy rice.' But his experience of his aunts' cooking was quite different. 'I remember one big kitchen area, full of women. There was lots of chopping and pounding and grinding. There was a hypnotic rhythm to it.

'Back in London my mother used to fall about laughing when I'd ask her how to cook something. A boy! In the kitchen! How ridiculous!' Even now when he cooks something for a live television show - he's probably best known as the consultant on Channel 4's A Place in France, about a misguided venture to open an Indian restaurant in the Ardèche - his mother will call him up afterwards. 'Occasionally she'll tell me I did it wrong.'

Sometimes after a long day in the restaurant he can think of nothing nicer than to come home to a plate of pasta. But over 20 years after he inherited his father's business, it's clear that the once-reluctant restaurateur is still fascinated by his culinary heritage. Next month he plans to return to India to pick up new inspiration for a proposed television series.

In the meantime the cutlets are warmed through and golden. The haleem looks rich and soothing. He tips a mixture of mustard seeds, cumin and dried chillies, tempered in hot oil until they fizzle and pop, into the crunchy salad.

'Eat! Eat!' he implores. 'This is food for eating!' How right he is. It is delicious.

· Rice, Spice and All Things Nice is published by Simon & Schuster, £20. The Star of India, 154 Old Brompton Road, London SW5, 0871 332 8566

China grass

Serves 4

300ml double cream

4 tbs sugar or to taste

500ml whole milk

2 tbs agar-agar flakes

2 pinches ground cardamom

2 pinches ground nutmeg

2 pinches saffron strands

2 tsp almonds, slivered (optional)

2 tsp pistachios, slivered (optional)

Put the cream, sugar and milk into a saucepan. Sprinkle the agar-agar flakes evenly on the surface of the liquid. Place on the heat and bring to the boil - avoid stirring as this will prevent you from assessing whether the flakes have dissolved or not. Simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally until the flakes are fully dissolved. Now boil the mixture fairly hard for 1 minute. Remove from the heat and add a pinch of cardamom and nutmeg.

Pour the mixture into a shallow Pyrex dish or into individual moulds. Sprinkle on the rest of the cardamom, nutmeg, saffron and the nuts. Allow the mixture to cool at room temperature and then refrigerate until set, which takes up to 1 1/2 hours. To serve, cut the set mixture into diamond shapes, or serve in the individual moulds.

Strained sweetened yoghurt

Serves 4

450ml Greek yoghurt

pinch saffron strands (soaked in 1 tsp milk for 30 minutes)

2 tbs caster sugar or more to taste

1/4 tsp ground cardamom

1 tsp ground almonds (optional)

1 tsp slivered almonds

1 tsp pistachios (coarsely chopped)

Suspend the yoghurt in a piece of muslin set over a bowl for 2-3 hours, to drain off all the whey. Tip the drained yoghurt from the cloth into a bowl and stir in the saffron milk. Add the sugar, whisk until it is the consistency of whipped cream, then sprinkle in the cardamom and ground almonds. Spoon into four small ramekins and garnish with the almonds and pistachios. Leave to set in the refrigerator for 1 hour, serve.

Chicken kofta and rice

Serves 4

For the chicken kofta

300g chicken breast (skinned)

3 garlic cloves (coarsely chopped)

5cm fresh ginger (coarsely chopped)

1-2 green chillies (chopped)

1 tsp garam masala

1 small bunch each of fresh coriander and dill (roughly chopped)

salt

For the broth

50g butter

1 medium carrot (cut into julienne strips)

1 clove garlic (crushed to a fine paste with a dash of salt)

3 x 2.5cm cinnamon sticks

3 cardamom pods

5 black peppercorns

3 bay leaves

60g basmati rice (washed and left to soak for 30 minute)s

1 tomato (deseeded, diced and lightly salted)

Place the chicken in a processor with the garlic, ginger, green chillies, garam masala, coriander and dill, leaving 1 tsp of each of the herbs. Salt to taste. Process to a fine mince. Shape into koftas the size of ping-pong balls and set aside.

Melt the butter in a large saucepan. Add the carrot and the garlic and sweat for a couple of minutes before adding the cinnamon, cardamom, peppercorns and bay leaves. Pour on 500ml water and bring to the boil. Gently add the koftas, lower the heat and simmer for approximately 5 minutes. Drain, and add rice and the tomato and garnish with the remaining dill and coriander.

Beetroot raita

4 cooked beetroots (diced or grated)

1 tsp ground cardamom plus extra for garnishing

2-3 tbs chopped fresh mint

450ml Greek yoghurt

1 tsp sugar

1 lemon

salt

Mix the beetroot, cardamom and 2 tablespoons of the chopped mint. Whisk together the yoghurt with the sugar, a squeeze of lemon juice and salt to taste. Layer the beetroot and the yoghurt in a serving dish, and garnish with the remaining mint and a sprinkle of ground cardamom.

Haleem: a traditional dish for Ramadan

Serves 6-8

1kg boned leg of lamb (cut into 1 cm cubes, plus the bone)

6 tbs ghee oil and butter

5 large onions (finely chopped)

5 cardamom pods

4 x 5cm cinnamon sticks

1 tsp whole black peppercorns

5 cloves

2 garlic cloves finely grated

2.5cm fresh ginger finely grated

115g white urad lentils

115g chana dal

225g bulgur wheat

1-2 tsp chilli powder

1-2 tsp ground turmeric

2 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp garam masala

1 tsp salt

For the garnish

3 onions (thinly sliced then fried until brown and crisp)

8-10 green chillies (finely chopped)

bunch fresh coriander (finely chopped)

bunch fresh mint (finely chopped)

10cm piece fresh ginger (cut into julienne strips)

2 lemons juiced

Rinse the lentils in cold water, then soak in warm water for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the ghee in a large, heavy bottomed, non-stick saucepan with a lid. Add the onions and all the whole spices, and saut until the onions are golden brown. Now add the garlic and ginger and soften. Add the lamb and stir to combine the ingredients. Cook on a medium heat for 30 minutes or so, stirring constantly, until all the meat is browned and the liquid has evaporated.

Add the soaked lentils to the meat and mix well. Add 500ml water, cover the pan and continue to cook on a medium heat for 20-30 minutes. Add the bulgur wheat, chilli powder, turmeric, cumin, garam masala and salt, and mix thoroughly. When the bulgur wheat starts to swell and has absorbed most of the moisture, stir in a further 1 litre hot water. As soon as the water starts to boil, reduce the heat as low as possible, cover, and simmer very gently for 2-2 hours, stirring occasionally. Add more hot water (up to 1 litre) if it seems too dry. Remove the pan from the heat, using a hand whisk, beat until the meat has been broken down and the mixture is the texture of porridge. You can leave some chunks of meat if you like.

Spoon into a serving dish, garnish with the fried onions, chillies, coriander, mint and ginger, and sprinkle over the lemon juice.