Topic: Scaling Recipes for Base Gravy

[livo]

Update:
I'm part way through stage 2 of Andy2295's Base Gravy and I will again question the efficiency factor of preparing this sauce daily in a business model.  It is a laborious task, however the results appear promising at this stage.  I had intended to split the gravy in half but I'd already made the full required quantity of the spice mix so I've just gone ahead and made the full (half) batch.

My previous point about the pot size is again called into question.  I started this in a 3.6 litre pot and had to move up to a 4.5 litre to complete Stage 1. I've now had to move it all up into a 7.2 litre pot for the Stage 2 otherwise there would be splatter everywhere, 

The stand out of this gravy is how thick it is.  Andy2295 makes no reference to thinning it before use but by comparison to other base gravy consistency it looks as though it could use 50 / 50 thinning with water.  This will make it very close to the thick curry we eat over here compared to the wet dishes traditionally from BIR.  It will also allow freezer space to be better utilized.

Updated update:
Finished!  I feel that this Base Gravy has a lot of potential.  I will be very interested to see how it goes in a curry and time permitting I may do the next Spice / Chilli scaling test later today using this one instead of Latif's.

Even cooking a half quantity required 4 hours total stove time so to do a 7 litre plus version would be ridiculous for the home cook.

It is possible that the heavy consistency I mentioned is directly caused by the change in ratio of onion to water in the smaller pot.  This could be what Andy2295 is referring to in his instruction that Half Quantity will not work.  Aside from possibly scaling the spice mix back a bit (or up a bit  ;D if necessary) all that really needs to be done is to reduce the onion volume in the first place to just under half so there is more water in the pot to begin with.

I ended up with approximately 3.5 litres, so back to the original starting point pot size but it took 2 larger pots to accomplish the process.

[Bob-A-Job]

It does look nice and thick.

A very good curry I used to have was at a local pub on a Sunday evening (only time it was available).  The Landlord had a south Asian chef (I think Bangladeshi) that came in and started it on a Friday evening to achieve the finished product by the Sunday.  The chef wasn't there all the time and the pubs had limited opening hours back then as well.  The aroma on a Saturday evening certainly helped the local TA's do a little more business I think.

And so to my point, commercially it may not have been feasible but since TA's don't open in the UK much before early afternoon, I guess there are several hours for the preparation of the base gravy on a daily basis if that spare time is utilised in prep.

Please keep us informed on how it goes.

BAJ.

[Secret Santa]

Aside from possibly scaling the spice mix back a bit (if necessary)

If, as you assert, the spice needs reducing when bulking up then surely it needs increasing when reducing down? Or does the magic spice-pixie not work in reverse?  ;D

[livo]

Thanks for pointing that out SS.  Now fixed.  I should have written if the spicing needs to be varied.  You are correct that it would need to work in reverse.  However, there are 2 things to consider here.

Firstly the spice mix used in this gravy doesn't contain any chilli and only a trace amount of cinnamon. The other spice possibly subject to non linear scaling is Cumin. I used a linear reduction of 50% to make a half batch. Applying the X 1.5 rule in reverse here with the quantities involved would be negligible anyway. We are talking here about one instance of halving in a relatively lightly spiced base gravy when compared to a dish preparation involving more concentrated spicing and including chilli..  When applying a non linear factor to increased quantity, one instance of doubling is linear, so one instance of halving at this quantity is consistent in principle. The non linear approach to bulk cooking is used dealing with multiple increases in quantity in comparatively highly spiced actual dishes. Not base gravy.

Secondly, I made the statement about spice levels being scaled back, if necessary, in direct reference to Andy2295's claim that you can't simply halve everything to make a half sized batch.  He says it doesn't work and the ingredients need to be proportioned, whatever that means. It could mean scaling up or down.   I disagree.  As I've said previously, I believe that a Base Gravy, by its low spice nature, by design, is able to be scaled directly in proportion.  I have no problem reconciling this with the non linear scaling of spiced actual "dishes".  They are 2 completely different operations.

There are no spice pixies. It isn't alchemy or witchcraft. It's all explainable as simply how spices work. How or why is another question. ;D

Edit:
SS, I've just realized that I actually did (accidently and almost completely) increase the spices to the inverse of X 1.5 anyway without and thought or intention of doing so.  You see out here 1 TBSP is 20 ml volume and over there it is only 15 ml.  Andy2295's recipe for the spice mix is given in mainly 2 TBSP measurements so where he was stipulating 2 TBSP (30 ml by volume), I used 1 TBSP (20 ml), which is exactly the  X 1.5 factor in reverse as the reciprocal of 1.5 is 0.66667.  The Garam Masala and Cumin halved from 1 TBSP, I measured 2 level tsp. The cinnamon is linear though I'm afraid, but I'm sure the difference between 1/4 tsp and 1/3 tsp won't be critical.

The negative of this is that I haven't actually scaled the Base Gravy by exactly half as I thought I was doing.    Oh well.  I still doubt that it will be making any real difference when you are using spice variations in the magnitude of 0.03 % by volume for the majority of spices, or less.