Asian Window

Rory MacLean reviews Ziauddin Sardar’s entertaining journey [Balti Britain : A Journey Through the British Asian Experience, by Ziauddin Sardar, published by Granta]to unravel the diverse threads of the British Asian experience. From The Guardian:

Not for the first time Ziauddin Sardar opens a door to places many of us would not otherwise see. He begins at a familiar crossroad. Around Birmingham’s balti triangle huddle the largest concentration of balti restaurants in the UK. Tourists flock here for the “hottest weekend breaks in Britain”. Balti ready-meals fill our supermarket shelves.

According to some dictionaries, the dish is named after the Balti tribes of Baltistan. But in truth the balti is a modern British invention. The first balti was conjured up not in the Swat Valley but rather in a Sparkbrook kitchen as a reaction to the ubiquitous curry – that earlier Anglo-Indian creation which
many Brits thought was the only food eaten in the subcontinent. No Pakistani in his right mind would ever cook in a balti (the word means bucket in Urdu). As one restaurant owner tells Sardar, “It’s a joke. It all started as a joke. It was an invention for the goras (white folks).”

More:

Previously in AW: Chronicle of the British Asian experience

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