1,001 Arabian Bites: what’s in a name? A lot, as it happens

The name of a dish can create a sense of context, or of poetry that creates expectations, but some associations are so deep they don’t warrant a second thought, until they do.

My name rhymes with “loaf”. That’s what I tell people and while it’s not quite right, it makes a good stock answer for the closest pronunciation for someone who’s not a native speaker of Arabic. I’m regularly thanked for having such an “easy” name and assured it won’t be forgotten, and I’m not sensitive when it’s botched just five minutes later. People tend to overestimate their short-term memories and I enjoy seeing how prolifically a single syllable can be butchered.

Nothing names itself – not the first time around, anyway. But names carry the combined gravitas of history and legacy, plus the odd journey of self-embodiment. Naming a new dish is a weird business, especially if, like me, you struggle constantly between the sometimes duelling forces of clarity and brevity and are repelled by all things cute – at least on menus.

The name of a dish can create a sense of context, poetry that leads to permanent expectations, but some associations are so deep they don’t warrant a second thought, until they do. For instance, when I picture baba ganoush, I think of a tasty dip. I do not (thankfully) envision someone’s dad acting like a shy kitten, despite its name spelling it out. Hummus, on the other hand, is humourless in its literality, being both the name of the dish and also its main ingredient.

I grew up calling stuffed grape leaves yabraq, derived from “yaprak”, Turkish for leaf. It’s an alternative name for the dish otherwise known as waraq anab (grape leaves).

In 1945, the American jazz singer Slim Gaillard released a catchy tune Yep-Roc Heresay, sung in some approximation of Arabic, with lyrics he recited from a Levantine restaurant menu: banadura (tomato) and bulghur in addition to the ­yabraq and harissah of the title. The song is said to have been temporarily banned on a radio station for its suspicious and potentially unsavoury references.

Maybe it’s a good thing Gaillard didn’t include an ode to laban ummo, one of the great dishes of our region. It’s a dreamy, creamy stew of young red meat in a rich yogurt sauce, but the name translates as “its mother’s milk” – a visceral flash of sweet lamb or veal swaddled in the very substance it had recently suckled. If that makes you cringe, consider skipping straight through to a dessert of znoud al-sitt: fried pastries bursting with clotted cream. Their name is a homage to “the plump upper arms of old ladies”.

When Gaillard sang about harissah, he was most likely not being savoury at all from a culinary point of view. More likely, he was talking about my favourite dessert: semolina cake doused in fragrant syrup. I know it best by its Egyptian name, basbousa. In other parts of the Arab world, you’ll see it called nammoura or harissah.

I’m reminded of a common dish that I’m convinced has acquired more aliases than any other. You know it: toast that’s had a circle cut out and an egg cracked into its void before pan-frying. It’s also known as egg in a basket, hen in a nest, one-eyed jack, and a hole in one, among countless others, each of them right and wrong and worthy and wonderful.

Nouf Al-Qasimi is an Emirati food analyst who cooks and writes in New Mexico