Tomato omelette and other misnomers

FOR a long time, I didn’t eat tomato/onion omelette, Machhali ki aankh (popular in Chitral region of Pakistan) and Goshaba (a delicacy of Afghanistan’s Herat province), presuming that these were non-vegetarian dishes.

After I settled in Pune more than a decade ago, I was told that the tomato/onion omelette was nothing but a veg uttapam (pancake). Machhali ki aankh has no fish-eye — it’s a dish of peas cooked in butter and garlic. The peas may look like fish-eyes, though they also resemble green button mushrooms. Goshaba has no trace of gosht (meat), and despite my knowledge of Dari (a variant of Persian), I couldn’t make out for nearly a decade that Gosh meant cabbage! But of these misnomers, the most intriguing is the tomato/onion omelette. This term is used only in Maharashtra as the dish is widely known as uttapam in other parts of the country.

While growing up in Iran, I erroneously thought for many years that the dish Shutur Qaalij was the kaleja (heart) of a camel as Shutur means a camel in Persian. It eventually dawned on me that this was a vegetarian dish with broccoli as its main component, and Qaalij means ‘mixed’ in Pahlavi. And broccoli is called Shatar in Persian.

Similarly, Phooler Bhanra of Comilla region in east Pakistan (now Bangladesh) is actually a fish dish, which is often misunderstood as a vegetarian preparation made of banana flower. Since Bengalis love to eat banana and pumpkin flowers and there are elaborate dishes that have mocha (banana flower) and kumrar phool (pumpkin flower), there is always a chance of a dietary faux pas when a pure vegetarian is served Phooler Bhanra (Bhanra means thick gravy with fish stock in rustic Bengali).

Food items often have a very interesting nomenclature. Bombay Duck is not a duck but a fish relished in Goa, Mumbai and Konkan regions. It’s these quaint names that make culinary delights even more attractive.

In Turkiye, Yumurta means egg (plural, Yumurtalar). But Yumurtalar is also a leafy vegetable in that country which has nothing to do with eggs and is frequently used in Turkish veg soups. Chicken is called Toyuq (to-yook) in Azerbaijani, but in the dialect of Tajikistan, it means an edible root like a beetroot or turnip.

Once, I stumbled upon a dish on the menu of a posh Bengaluru restaurant, famous for its exotic and English cuisines. It was called pee-pot (actually pea-pot, mildly singed peas in cheddar). I was obviously wary of trying pee-pot, lest I got something I had not bargained for. Later, it transpired that this was a case of the printer’s devil. The manager immediately corrected the spelling and had the courtesy not to charge me anything for the dish.