Topic: Another Asian / bir channel.

[Peripatetic Phil]

Yo Naga, unfortunately

Code: [Select]

http://Honey and Black Pepper Beef isn't yet a URL 

I think that Naga probably intended to write "[D]inner tonight is Rik's excellent Honey and Black Pepper Beef".

** Phil.

[livo]

Chicken carcass obviously didn't go into his vegetarian ready meals and he makes the point.  This to me looks like a promising base. I'm up to give it a try, but I won't use 15 kg of onions and yes, I'll use linear scaling because it's just a Base Gravy.

I like his explanation of the ketchup. Sweet, sour tomato all in one go. At least it isn't Campbell's concentrated tomato soup.

I wonder why he is so adamant about not using the coriander roots and the distinction between Thai and indian. Others insist it is the crucial ingredient in their base gravy.  I understand keeping the leaves aside for the dishes. That makes good sense commercially.

[Secret Santa]

and he claims a controversial ingredient, tomato ketchup .

It's not controversial is it. The quantity he uses raised my eyebrow a bit though especially as he then adds tomato puree as well. Really it's just a cheat's way to sweeten the sauce without doing a long cook needed to bring the natural sweetness of the onions out, which is the proper way to do it.

Also, strangely, he makes a point of not using watered-down tomato puree because it's going to be added to a big pan of watery veg anyway, which is perfectly sensible. And yet he unnecessarily makes a stock at the beginning with carrots and onions, which are also in the main base, so totally unnecessary extra ingredients. He should just boil up the carcase on its own, maybe with the cinnamon, but that too could go in the main pot.

And, if I'm being really picky, he says he chops the onions because he only has a small stick blender so it makes it easier to blend than cooking the onions whole. In fact it's easier to cook them whole because they can then be blended by forcing them individually against the bottom of the pot with the blender. To be fair though, with the size of pot he's using, his little stick blender would probably be totally immersed doing it that way. But for the smaller pot used by the average home cook, whole onion cooking and blending is in fact the easier way I would argue.

Oh, and is anyone going to tell him that mL and grams are not the same thing?

I'm bored with bases though, haven't seen anything new in what must be 10 years now.

And Livo, talking about coriander roots, in general here in the UK coriander is quite hard to find with the roots still on so it definitely isn't a necessary ingredient for a base, although why he wouldn't use them is beyond me as they are not different enough in flavour to make an ounce of difference if he included them. Maybe he's just keeping them for something else where they are used fresh.

[Garp]

Oh, and is anyone going to tell him that mL and grams are not the same thing?

In many cases they are equivalent.

[livo]

Oh, and is anyone going to tell him that mL and grams are not the same thing?

In many cases they are equivalent.

To be fair, it's youtube and he wasn't giving a chemistry lecture on the properties of water.  I often measure liquid by mass.  It's just easier if you already have the kitchen scales out.

Santa, I thought the same thing about the necessity of making a stock.  It really only added the chicken and cinnamon which could all be done in one go.  The issue in doing it in one step is the ability to completely remove the chicken carcass.  I've done it before and some of the little bones can come free or it can come right apart.  The whole gravy then needs to go through a straining process after blending.  Doing 2 step is not a bad thing but it does add considerably to the total cooking time and gas consumption.

After seeing other chefs blend the whole spices into the base, it would probably be ok to just use powdered cinnamon.

It would be good to know Rik's reasoning behind the 2 step process.

I will today be making reduced quantity so I'll just use leg and thigh bones which will be easily removed.  I'm doing a 1:10 micro batch today using just 1.5 kg of onions.  To be true to recipe, I'll also make a batch of his mixed powder and note the correction made in the comments about the Tomato puree quantity.  400 g not 900 g.

How big would you say those cooking pots are? 15 kg of onion so my guess would be 18 - 20 litres. Why do I ask?   In the About blurb for the channel he mentions he and wife personally preparing 400 BIR ready meal servings a day. He also says in the Base Gravy video each serving is around 330 ml of gravy.  He would need 140 litres, 7 pots, 105 kg of onions.  If these single serves were cooked BIR method at only 3 minutes per dish it would take 20 hours actual stove cook time.  Cooking doubles at 4.5 minutes would speed things up to 15 hours. That is some real BIR cooking going on over there in Thailand.  Hats off to Loveitspicy to get that done on a regular basis.  That's way above my consideration.

[Secret Santa]

Oh, and is anyone going to tell him that mL and grams are not the same thing?

In many cases they are equivalent.

If, by equivalent, you mean almost the same then maybe. But in actuality there is only one case where they are truly equivalent and that's for water.

[Secret Santa]

After seeing other chefs blend the whole spices into the base, it would probably be ok to just use powdered cinnamon.

Definitely. I'd just cook the carcase on its own for the weak stock and add a pinch of cinnamon powder to the main pot. He seems to be making work for himself.

he mentions he and wife personally preparing 400 BIR ready meal servings a day.

He doesn't say they cooked them individually though does he, which I highly doubt they did for a bulk operation like his.

[livo]

Oh, and is anyone going to tell him that mL and grams are not the same thing?

In many cases they are equivalent.

If, by equivalent, you mean almost the same then maybe. But in actuality there is only one case where they are truly equivalent and that's for water.

Only at certain atmospheric pressure and temperature and only for pure water.  The density of water, being a liquid, is not stable.

[Naga]

It's great to hear that Rik/Rich/Loveitspicy is still on the go! He was an interesting character on the Forum and always posted decent recipes. I still use his Doner-in-a-tin recipe and method and, coincidentally, dinner tonight is Rik's excellent Honey and Black Pepper Beef.

Oops! Don't know what happened to the link in the original post for Loveitspicy's Honey and Black Pepper Beef, but here it is:

https://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=14045.msg122478#msg122478