Balti (food)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Balti is the name for a style of food probably first devised and served in Birmingham, England. The first written record of the term dates to 1984 [1]. (N.B. In the Easter Special edition of the BBC programme Balderdash and Piffle, an earlier 1982 written citation was presented from a community magazine in Birmingham, though it has not as yet been included in the OED. There was also an isolated reference from a restaurant in Newcastle on Tyne in the same year, though all the other early references are from Birmingham.) Local tradition in south-east Birmingham names Adil's Restaurant as the inventor of the balti, in 1977 [2].
The name Balti food has nothing to do with an ethnic group living in India and Pakistan who are also called Balti. These Balti people are Tibetan Muslims. The food 'Balti' is named after the pot in which it is cooked. Balti food is a Panjabi recipe and prepared mainly in the Panjabi way.
The food is a hot curry-style dish, most likely taking its name from the thick flat-bottomed steel or iron pot in which it is both cooked and served. Normally the balti is served with large naan bread; pieces of which are torn off by hand and used to scoop up the hot curry sauce from the pot. Side dishes and starters usually include onion bhajis, samosas, poppadums and creamy dips.
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[edit] The origin of the word
The exact origin of the word is debated. The following origins are sometimes given:
- The term "balti" refers to the steel or iron pot in which the food is cooked or served, taken from the word balti in Hindi and Bengali for a bucket. This is the usual explanation. However, in Hindi, the word balti refers to a bucket not a cooking pot. The term for the metal container in which a balti is served would be, from Urdu, a karahi or karai
- Loyd Grossman, under whose name a line of British curry sauces is marketed, claims on his Balti sauce jar that the term comes from a word for "hubcap," since Indian truckers would cook their Balti in a hubcap.
- The Kashmiri term for a karahi or karai is bati. It is possible that this was corrupted, under the influence of the Birmingham accent, into "balti".
- The origin of the food would not appear to come from the region of Baltistan or the Balti people who live there; they cook a very different type of Tibetan-influenced food that is based around pasta/noodle dishes. However, Baltistan is a very remote and little-visited mountainous area on the border of Kashmir, and so it is possible that Kashmiris in Britain may have tried to give their newly-invented dish a cover of spurious 'authenticity' - by claiming its origin as being in mysterious Baltistan.
- Some suggest it arose from "bowl tea", a pidgin-english phrase used by English working-class workmen who found the meal to be an affordable and filling 'tea' (dinner) at the end of a day's work.
- One theory[citation needed] is that the dish was devised by a particularly hairless Indian chef, known to all his workmates as "Baldy", and that his nickname was corrupted into the name of his signature dish, the balti.
The last two theories are generally considered examples of folk etymology.
[edit] Balti houses
Balti restaurants are often known in Birmingham as 'balti houses', although they are not private residences. Balti houses have a reputation as being cheap places to eat. In part, this is because they commonly have no alcohol licence, although customers who wish to drink are welcome to bring their own alcohol with them. The interior of a typical Birmingham balti house was traditionally simple, with the earliest balti houses being remembered as having newspapers used instead of table cloths. Indeed some of the more traditional establishments still have a plastic cover over the tables with the menus secured underneath. This spicy dish was introduced to the city by its large Pakistani population[3]. It's a way of cooking that started in the city in the 1980s.
Balti houses originally clustered along and behind the main road between Sparkhill and Moseley, to the south of Birmingham city centre. This area (comprising the Ladypool Road, Stoney Lane and Stratford Road) is still sometimes referred to as the 'Balti Triangle' and contains possibly Birmingham's highest concentration of Balti restaurants, as well as some of the oldest to be found in the city.
The food and its style of presentation proved very popular during the 1980s and grew in the 1990s; Balti restaurants gradually opened up throughout the West Midlands and then a large part of Britain. The expanded curry market in Britain is now said to be worth some £4 billion annually; but some still claim that it is impossible get a 'proper' Balti outside the urban West Midlands. There is even a balti house in Australia, appropriately named the Brum Balti, that plays a non-stop selection of tunes by 1970s Birmingham soft-rock bands such as Electric Light Orchestra and The Moody Blues. A composition titled Balti Utensil appears on the album Hamas Cinema Gaza Strip, by the English experimental electronica artist, Muslimgauze (also known as Bryn Jones).
On 28 July 2005, a tornado [4] caused extensive damage to buildings in the 'Balti Triangle' area of Birmingham, closing many restaurants. A clean-up operation ensured most had reopened by the beginning of 2006.
