Chana Saar Upkari (and an update on Sulekha)

A cold winter day.

A hot raging fever.

A nastier cold.

A painful throat.

A runny nose.

This must be a familiar scene for a lot of people. I know that it was for me. Almost every year, when the weather changes, I seem to catch cold from someone or the other. My otherwise strong immunity takes a beating at about the same time each year. This recipe is perfect for those times.

1 cup Brown Chickpeas

4 Red Chillies

1 tbsp Tamarind Paste

1 tsp Coriander Seeds

Salt to taste

For the seasoning:

1 tsp Oil

1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds

1/4 tsp Asafoetida

7-8 Curry Leaves

Pressure cook the chickpeas with 4-5 cups of water. Drain the liquid into a vessel. Keep the chickpeas for the upkari.


Grind together about 2 tbsp of cooked chickpeas with the coriander seeds, tamarind paste, and red chillies. Add this paste to the liquid in the vessel. Add the salt and bring to a boil. In a frying ladle, heat the oil and add the mustard seeds and the asafoetida. When the mustard splutters, add the curry leaves. Add this to the saar.


Upkari

Cooked Chickpeas (from recipe above)

1 tsp Oil

4 Red Chillies

1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds

4-5 Curry Leaves

1 tbsp Jaggery

1 tbsp Coconut, scraped

Salt to taste

In a kadhai, heat the oil. Add the mustard, red chillies and the curry leaves. When the mustard splutters, add the cooked chickpeas, salt and jaggery. Cover and cook for about 5 minutes. Uncover and add the scraped coconut.

We had this as our Sunday lunch with some dali-saar, patrodo and rice. I'm sending this over to this month's edition of JFI: Chickpeas and to Srivalli's MLLA.

Update on the Sulekha issue:

I wrote to Sulekha.com asking them to remove my content and ban the person who goes by the Sulekha username of AndhraMirchi. I got this response from them:

Dear Arundhati

Based on your mail, we have sent a mail to the blogger who posted the blog to remove the blogs. We were waiting for the blogger for an action till tomorrow and then we thought of removing the same. This is just to let you know that the reported content has been removed from our site.Also we would like to know if you could post your recipe blog in our site then it would be great. Please feel free to contact us at member.relations@sulekha.net and we are happy to help you.

Regards

Deepesh

It doesn't look like the content has been removed. I spoke to someone in Member Relations and she told me that Sulekha contacted AndhraMirchi and the person responded by saying that the posts were made by a friend. When asked to remove the content, the person said that he would do this after checking if the content is really lifted from somewhere else.

In the meanwhile, I found these additional links:

1.http://food.sulekha.com/cuisine/karnataka/capsicum-phodiyo.htm

and http://andhramirchi.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/09/capsicum-phodiyo/comments.htm

The photo on this page is lifted directly from my blog post:

http://chefatwork.blogspot.com/2007/09/capsicum-phodiyo-capsicum-fritters.html

and the content is lifted directly from

http://chefatwork.blogspot.com/2007/09/cauliflower-phodiyo-fried-cauliflower.html

2. http://food.sulekha.com/cuisine/karnataka/narlya-kheeri.htm

Photo and content is lifted from:

http://chefatwork.blogspot.com/2007/09/patoli-nevryo-and-narlya-kheeri-coconut.html

3. Bread Upkari: http://food.sulekha.com/cuisine/karnataka/bread-upkari.htm

Word for word content lifted from: http://chefatwork.blogspot.com/2007/07/bread-upkari.html

4. http://food.sulekha.com/cuisine/karnataka/cauliflower-phodiyo.htm

Copied From:

http://chefatwork.blogspot.com/2007/09/cauliflower-phodiyo-fried-cauliflower.html

5. http://food.sulekha.com/cuisine/karnataka/chakli.htm

Copied From: http://chefatwork.blogspot.com/2007/09/goodies-for-ganpati-on-ganesh-chaturthi.html

I was told that everything will be done in 2 hours. What is the result? Nothing much except that in a few posts, the extremely creative AndhraMirchi has made some cosmetic changes. Changed cumin to jeera, changed 2 cups to 5 cups etc, etc. The cheapness of some people.

More recent update: I got a call from the same lady at Sulekha Member Relations. They were able to confirm that this person did indeed make these cosmetic changes during the course of today. They have removed the user from Sulekha.com and along with the user they have removed all copied content. I don't think that is entirely true. I can still see some of the posts. Maybe it will take some time.

Cauliflower Phodiyo is word for word a copy from my post: http://chefatwork.blogspot.com/2007/09/cauliflower-phodiyo-fried-cauliflower.html. The blogger is a different person called Saraamulu. I don't even know how to keep track of things like this.