IFR: Where's the Recipe?

Before anyone else says, Where's the recipe?...
It's on yer blogs! Most of them anyway!

From left to right:

• Indosungod's lime pickle in its first stage, cooking in the sun. The large man's handkerchief has been put to good use yet again. It rained and the several thick layers of good quality cotton, that can only be found in India, held it at bay.
• Grapefruit pickle. Thanks, Pel, for the idea. The pickle masala is just like my lemon pickle. I used 3 medium sized grapefruits instead of lemons.
• Mixed veggie pickle. Thanks, Roopa, for the idea. I made this just like my lime pickle and added 2 carrots and reduced the limes to 7 instead of 9.
• My lemon pickle, because I am all out!
• Also, in progress, is adamaanga, a sun-dried mango pickle from Ammini's Grains, Greens and Grated Coconuts. I don't have pictures for that yet.

Grapefruit marmalade. Thank you, Anita! I used 1 medium sized grapefruit instead of limes. My pectin syrup was almost non-existent because the grapefruit didn't have any pips and the limes and lemons used in the pickles above yielded a measly amount of pips. No matter, it's delightful! It is more bitter than orange marmalade and a must for karela lovers!

Okra salad. Thank you, Gini! I finally made it even though the okra was not that great. We had it for dinner tonight, with Greek pitas toasted in the oven.

From my garden to yours...I hope you had a wonderful relaxing weekend.

IFR New Finds and Weekend Burgers

I heard some of you asking for some food, please! Your wish is my command. Sometimes.

I love my sister's refrigerator. It's always full. She's an amazing cook and is always trying out new stuff. It's a treat when she leaves us home alone and goes off to work. Yum! We wake up whenever we want, raid her pantry for all sorts of delicious namkeens and new cereals for breakfast. Lest she feel offended, we devour upma or pohe or idlis for a mid-morning snack. We down her special chicken masala with soft wheat wraps for lunch. And just when we're settling down with a humongous cup of tea, she arrives and becomes a blur in the kitchen, only to have whipped up some amazing stuffed baingan and Gujarati dal. Her husband makes his presence felt by pulling out his copy of the trusted Prashad and putting together a Goa Prawn Masala that lights you up from the inside as well as out!

I absolutely have to make this! It's fiery and hits you a couple of seconds after you have swallowed a mouthful. With my insides on fire, I lunged once more for the doors of the aforementioned refrigerator. Since there were fewer containers and serving bowls than in the morning, I spied a yogurt container that I had never seen before. Now those of you who live in and around New Jersey may scoff at me but when I read Desi Natural Dahi, I had to reach out and find out more.

• It's firm.
• It's not slimy.
• It's sharper than your regular store-bought yogurt.
• It's almost as good as the homemade dahi in India.
• It's made by Derle Farms, NJ and has been in the market for about a year now (I think!) after some serious product development.

I haven't yet seen Desi Natural Dahi in the local Indian grocery stores here but then again, I haven't looked for yogurt in the Indian stores since I make my own. If I'm out of yogurt, I prefer to buy Wallaby yogurt from Wild Oats or Whole Foods. It's creamy and has just the right flavor according to me. I don't need my yogurt extra-firm so it doesn't bother me that Wallaby yogurt is more cream-style than custardy.

Bee and Jai of Jugalbandi have a super tutorial on making desi dahi at home. Be sure to check it out!

Where's the food, you say? I haven't been cooking much lately. For several reasons. I was away on vacation, to begin with. Then we had back-to-back visitors as soon as we got back home. I did cook one meal but that was it. After that, my favorite client arrived and stayed with us for 5 days. We ate out, ordered extra and ate leftovers for lunch the next day. I did toss together a few salads that I found as a result of quick Googling. But there was no time for pictures as the focus was work, work and more work. I could have cooked if I wanted to but it was just too darned hot to cook. It still is. But since we are all tired of eating out and I had about 3 lbs of ground turkey in my refrigerator that was very close to the expiration date, my husband fired up the grill...

while Medha patted out the burgers after I had mixed all the spices into the meat. I washed and sliced the lettuce, tomatoes and onions...

and soon we had the most perfect burgers ever!

While I don't have an exact recipe for these burgers, I can tell you what I did:

• I put some olive oil in a mixing bowl
• Added some balsamic vinegar just because it was easier to reach than the vinegar from my pickled serranos
• Added Sweet Baby Ray's Barbecue Sauce
• Chopped one medium size white onion and added it, too
• Tossed in some garam masala
• Added some red chilli powder and salt
• Eyed some garlic and decided it was not worth the trouble. Same with ginger.
• Mixed in the ground turkey
• Showed Medha how to use that burger maker thingee. She was only too thrilled because she was finally allowed to handle raw meat. She has a thing about feeling the texture of raw foods. I did make her wash her hands in hot soapy water and clean her nails out before she was allowed to do anything else!
• Grilled the burgers and ran inside when the mosquitoes put in an appearance. They fear nothing: not citronella, not DEET, and not even Odomos, unlike the mosquitoes of Chicagoland. Hmmph!

I have enough burgers for two more meals. Yay! Tomorrow I will slice them and have them in some delightful Greek pitas. I might even make some of Anita's mint and walnut chutney to go with it. Or perhaps some labneh. I can't wait! And it looks like I am cooking again, despite the heat!

The Real Hall of Shame

Dear "Bali Food Recipes and World Most Famous Recipes",

Not only is your grammar awful, your sense of morals and ethics is also amiss. You misunderstand the purpose of RSS feeds. It is not a source of free content for you to mine and publish on your web site. It is not content on which you can place ads to monetize your pathetic web site. It is for the convenience of my readers, so that they can read my posts in their favorite RSS reader, and be alerted of new posts on my food blog.

I left you this comment on July 14 on a plaigiarized post and it is still under moderation.

July 14th, 2007 19:13

Please desist from reproducing my posts in entirety as you do not have my permission to do so. The images on my blog have my copyright. Please remove all my images from your web site, too.

This is my first notice to you and it applies to all the posts and images you have copied verbatim from my blog.

You have the nerve to publish this on the thing that you call your web site

Note: Any comments are permitted only because the site owner is letting you post, and any comments will be removed for any reason at the absolute discretion of the site owner.

Since you did not respond nor publish my comment, I had no choice but to make a complaint with Google AdSense to report a violation. I also left you this comment a short while ago, informing you of the same - hoping that this time, it will get through to you, regardless of whatever it is that you are smoking.

July 18th, 2007 05:55

I left you a comment asking you to take down posts and images that you have copied from my food blog, Indian Food Rocks. Unfortunately you did not seem to care as my content continues to be copied.

I have reported your site to Google for abuse and violations with respect to AdSense as what you are doing violates the AdSense Terms of Service.

You still have time to take down copied content. I will be reporting this to your web host next.

Mine is not the only blog you have had the audacity to copy without permission. My friend Ashwini was shocked to find an online Mumbai magazine copying her gorgeous images. But you seem to be at it, too. You are scraping the sites of several well-known food blogs, including Orangette and Cooking With Amy.

Shame on you, Bali Recipes.

Take my content off your pathetic web site immediately.

A hat tip to Bee and Sweet Pel for the heads up.

Update (July 19, 2007): I got an email from Bali Recipes earlier this morning telling me that they have taken my content off their site and that they thought I would not mind since they linked back to my site.

I believe that recipes are for sharing and that there can be no copyright on a recipe per se. However, my stories and my pictures are my own and are not available for copying without my permission.

They took off Ashwini's posts, too. And now, when I try to access their site, I am shown a message that says that their account has been suspended.

Bali Recipes wanted me to take down this post as they have complied with my wishes. However, there are plenty of others out there that will make the same mistake - some because they are clueless about copyrights, others because they want to make a quick buck. The only way to get the message across is by writing about it over and over and over again which is why I will not take down this post.