Australian MasterChef series 2 finalist, Alvin Quah – he of the funky white glasses and cropped ‘do – has been accused of plagiarising a recipe by Bee Yinn Low from Asian food blog, Rasa Malaysia, on his own blog, Cinnamon Pig.
Rasa Malaysia is the biggest independent Asian recipes site on the internet, receiving 2.5 million page views and 600,000+ visitors per month. Low’s first cookbook, Easy Chinese Recipes, has just been released worldwide and went to #1 on Amazon.com’s chinese cookbook category.
Quah’s recipe for Black Sesame Dumplings in Ginger Syrup, posted July 2011, bears a striking resemblance to Low’s Black Sesame Dumplings (Tang Yuan), posted April 5th, 2009.
Two hours ago, On Monday 3rd October at approximately 10am Adelaide time, Low tweeted this from her @rasamalaysia Twitter account:
@cinnamonalvin WOW u took my Black Sesame Dumplings recipe, copied it word-by-word w/ minor changes & made it on national TV with no credit?
Quah immediately tweeted back:
@rasamalaysia hey bee, is it a mistake? I promise it’s mine. No copying here. Mum use to make it for me.
But Low was not convinced it was a mistake, tweeting back:
My recipe: bit.ly/8aCJz. @cinnamonalvin ‘s recipe:cinnamonpig.com.au/?p=1260.Ur mom wrote the recipe the same way as I do, word by word?!
This was shortly followed by:
Guilty as charged, @cinnamonalvin has just blocked me.
