Cooking without oil

I cooked a meal recently where Absolut vodka was used in all the dishes — nobody got drunk because heat evaporates the alcohol, but leaves the goodness in the vodka intact.

 I cooked prime pork ribs-marinated overnight– in their own juice, after gently frying masses of chopped garlic and chilly which formed a bed for the ribs in the AMC pot.

Then I prepared a fresh batch of marinade made in the formula of 1-2-3-4-5, essentially of sugar, vinegar, dark sauce, soy sauce and Absolut vodka: the numbers can represent table spoons, cups or glasses, depending on the quantity of meat used. Also, which number goes with each ingredient depends on the cook’s preference.

I tend to put 5 with Vodka and 3 or 4 with vinegar. Sugar could be either 1 or 2 while dark sauce shouldn’t be higher than 3. Sometimes, one ingredient could be measured with a tablespoon while another could be measured with a cup. The crux is be flexible and remember that 5 ingredients make up the marinade, and permutate to your heart’s content. 

This marinade was added slowly to the ribs as the natural juices thickened and the meat softened. I checked every 10 minutes, turning the ribs on their garlic-chilly bed to ensure that nothing stuck at the bottom of the pot and got burnt.

In all, cooking time took  about 2 hours, over the lowest ring on the gas hob.

The other dishes which enjoyed a healthy slosh of Absolut were fruit salad (for the dessert), steamed belly of salmon with Japanese shimeji mushrooms and ratatoulle.

For the fruit salad, it was a no-brainer to douse the freshly squeezed orange juice base with half a glass of vodka, a table-spoon of sugar and generous sprinkling of all-spice and cinnamon powder.

Absolut wasn’t added to the steamed salmon and shimeiji till the dish was almost done. Turn off the heat, sprinkle some vodka and a dash of sesame oil and then cover for the steaming to complete.

For the ratatoulle, when the vegetables (crushed whole garlic, onions, zuchinni, tomatoes, cabbage, carrots and one yellow bell pepper or pepsicum) were cooked till almost soft, add a marinade of balsamic vinegar and Absolut and continue cooking. When the “rat” was as soft as my family liked (which is like ripe strawberries), turn off the gas and leave the dish to continue cooking in its own heat for a little while longer. Then serve, with rice or bread.