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 though it has not as yet been included in the OED. This referred to a Balti dish served in the Rupali restaurant in Newcastle on Tyne.) The city from above Centenary Square. ... Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: God Save the King/Queen Capital London Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq mi  Population    - 2005 est. ...

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. An Indian chicken curry A curry is any of a variety of distinctively spiced dishes, best-known in Indian, Thai and other South Asian cuisines, but curry has been adopted into all of the mainstream cuisines of the Asia-Pacific area. ... Look up Dish in Wiktionary, the free dictionary For a dish in the sense of a type of prepared food, see recipe. ... The old Steel cable of a colliery winding tower Steel is a metal alloy whose major component is iron, with carbon content between 0. ... General Name, Symbol, Number iron, Fe, 26 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 8, 4, d Appearance lustrous metallic with a grayish tinge Atomic mass 55. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Cookware and bakeware. ... A bakery near Kabul, Afghanistan Naan is a round flatbread made of wheat flour. ... Flour is always 100%, and the rest of the ingredients are a percent of that amount by weight. ... For the computer protocol, see SAUCE In cooking, a sauce is a liquid or sometimes solid based selection of various ingredients served on or used in the preparation of food. ... Binomial name Allium cepa L. Onion in the general sense can be used for any plant in the genus Allium but used without qualifiers usually means Allium cepa, also called the garden onion. ... Bhaji can mean: Amaranth Pav bhaji This is a disambiguation page — a list of pages that otherwise might share the same title. ... A triangular Samosa A samosa is a common snack in South Asia, mainly in Pakistan and India. ... Pappad is an Indian and Sri Lankan food item. ... A dip is a common condiment for many types of food. ...

The origin of the word

The exact origin of the word is debated. The following origins are sometimes given:

1. 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
2. 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.
3. 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".
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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. Hindi (हिन्दी or हिंदी in Devanagari; pronunciation: ), an Indo-European language spoken mainly in northern and central India, is the official language of the Union government of India [1][2]. It is part of a dialect continuum of the Indic family, bounded on the northwest and west by Punjabi, Sindhi, Urdu, and... Bengali or Bangla (বাংলা, IPA: ) is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from Prakrit, Pāli and Sanskrit. ... ΚĀṇθΔ Look up bucket in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... ΚĀṇθΔ Look up bucket in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... For other uses, see Kashmiri (disambiguation) Kashmiri is a Dardic language spoken primarily in Kashmir, an Asian region now split between India, Pakistan and China. ... Baltistan (Urdu: بلتستان) , also known as Baltiyul in the Balti language, is a region to the north of Kashmir, bordering the Chinese region of Xinjiang. ... The Balti are a people of Ladakhi/Tibetan descent with some Dardic admixture whose population of 400,000 is found in Pakistani-controlled Baltistan (a former district of Ladakh); and in Kargil and Leh districts of Ladakh, a region in Indian-controlled Jammu & Kashmir. ... This article is becoming very long. ... Kashmir (or Cashmere) may refer to: Kashmir region, the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent India, Kashmir conflict, the territorial dispute between India, Pakistan, and the China over the Kashmir region. ... A pidgin, or contact language, is the name given to any language created, usually spontaneously, out of a mixture of other languages as a means of communication between speakers of different tongues. ... Working class is a term used both in academic sociology as well as in ordinary conversation. ... // A nickname is a short, clever, cute, derogatory, or otherwise substitute name for a person or things real name (for example, Bob, Rob, Robby, Robbie, Robi, Bobby, Rab, Bert, Bertie, Butch, Bobbers, Bobert, Beto, Bobadito, and Robban (in Sweden), are all short for Robert). ... A signature dish is a recipe that identifies an individual chef. ... Folk etymology or popular etymology is a linguistic term for a category of false etymology which has grown up in popular lore, as opposed to one which arose in scholarly usage. ...

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. Most balti houses are run by Pakistanis [2]. This spicy dish was introduced to the city by its large Kashmiri population. It's a way of cooking that started in the city in the 1980s [3].

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. Sparkhill is an area of Birmingham, England, situated between Springfield and Sparkbrook. ... Moseley Park during the 2003 festival Moseley is a suburb of Birmingham, England, located 2 miles to the south of the city centre. ...

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). Toms Restaurant, a restaurant in New York made familiar by Suzanne Vega and the television sitcom Seinfeld A restaurant is an establishment that serves prepared food and beverages to order, to be consumed on the premises. ... The County of West Midlands is a metropolitan county in western central England, the United Kingdom, formed in 1974. ... The County of West Midlands is a metropolitan county in western central England, the United Kingdom, formed in 1974. ... Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) were a successful rock music group of the 1970s and 1980s from Birmingham, England. ... The Moody Blues are a British rock band originally from Birmingham, England. ... Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: God Save the King/Queen Capital London Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq mi  Population    - 2005 est. ... Muslimgauze was the stage name of Bryn Jones (June 17, 1961 - January 14, 1999), an extremely prolific British electronic music artist, strongly influenced by everything to do with the Middle East. ...

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. The Birmingham Tornado was the strongest tornado recorded in the United Kingdom in nearly 30 years, occurring on 28 July 2005 in the suburbs of Birmingham. ...

See also

• Chicken tikka masala

Chicken Tikka Masala has origins in the Indian subcontinent. ...

External links

• Birmingham City Council website about the 'Balti Triangle' in Sparkbrook, Birmingham
• The Asian Balti Restaurant Association