Plagiarism, a new look and some fish patties

Last Updated on March 24, 2011

Let me start off with serious business first, plagiarism is something every blogger dreads about.  Every other month, this topic is brought to forefront by bloggers who have become victims or have a friend who has become a victim of this act.  In many cases it is a blogger replicating a recipe and/or a photo from another blog and at times it is the mainstream media that stoops to this  act.

Latest victim of plagiarism is Kavya’s Kitchen. Eenadu, a very popular  telugu newspaper, published a Mushrooms Korma recipe in its food section last week.  The recipe was not plagiarized but the picture was.  It was Kavya’s Mushroom Tomato Korma picture, the second one in her post, that was reproduced in the paper without her permission and the least they could have done is link back to the original source.  Kavya has written to the editor about this and has not gotten a reply  yet.  I am sure  the editor is unaware of this.  It was probably  a junior guy at the publication who was time constrained and picked up a random picture from the web or the person who contributed the recipe.  Also, as we have seen in many instances, whenever a mainstream newspaper is accused of  plagiarism, it usually takes time to hear back from them, if at all we do.  Anita, who was a victim herself writes about it here.

Food blogging is a hobby for most of us and we do put in lot of time and effort into it.  Whenever we come across such incidents, it undermines one’s zeal to blog.   I know once the content is on the web, it is public information and anyone can access and use it, but all we ask of is to give proper credit where it is due.

Now to the merrier side of blogging, how do you like the new look here at MySpicyKitchen! Yesterday, I was browsing thru the templates and came across the current template. I prefer white background, big font and wide body to work on.  As I could not find a template that met all my requirements, I settled for this template. For a change, I thought,  why not make the blog colorful!  What do you think??

After all this ranting, let me get to today’s feast, fish patties!

Total Time: 40 – 45 minutes
Preparation Time: 25 minutes (15 minutes for making patties and 10 for putting together the ingredients)
Cooking Time: 15 – 20 minutes (5-7 minutes per batch)
Yields: 30

Printable version of the recipe

Ingredients:

• 1.75 lbs Tilapia fillets or 4 big pieces of fillets
• 10 Green Chilies chopped
• 1 medium Onion finely chopped
• 1 tbsp Ginger Garlic paste
• 1 – 1 ½ tsp Chili Powder (adjust to taste)
• ½ tsp Pepper Powder
• 1 tsp Coriander Powder
• ½ tsp Garam Masala Powder
• Salt to taste
• 1 tbsp Oil + more for grilling
• Cilantro chopped

Preparation

• Cut fish into small pieces and mince it in the food processor along with green chilies. Need not process the fish to a fine paste, coarsely minced fish should work.
• Mix all ingredients to the minced fish, except the oil for grilling.
• Make patties of desired size. Make them a little flatter so that it cooks fast.
• Heat a grill pan or a frying pan with 2 tbsp of oil. I used the frying pan.
• Once the pan is hot, place the patties on the pan and grill it for 4-6 minutes. Don’t forget to flip the patties in between.
• I made them in three batches.  Add more oil to the pan if required, when grilling the remaining batches of patties.
• Serve them with your favorite dipping sauce. I served it with some Sriracha hot sauce.

Note:
The measures given are approximate measures. Use these measurements as a rough guide. When I made these, I did not intend to blog it right away, hence did not bother to pay much attention to the quantity of ingredients. Fish measurements are accurate though.. 🙂