A World Without Wheat...... Thanksgiving Rewind

Well, the big meal is over, cooked, served, chewed and digested!  It turned out pretty awesome.  The new soft white rolls were amazing; well beaten but they were soft and light: springy inside with a slightly eggy taste. No crumbly rolls here! The picture on this post is of those rolls.  A keeper recipe I will surely bake many times in the future.

The gravy was excellent: I used sweet rice flour; 1 tbsp per cup of turkey pan juices.  You can buy it in an oriental market; $1.39 for enough to make several gravies.  Mix it in a cup with some cold water before adding it to the roaster pan (sans turkey!) and cooked it 5-8 minutes.  A sprinkle of salt and we had lots of flavorful gravy to pour over the meal.

The reason there was lots and its flavor was outstanding?  A roaster pan full of fresh stuff!  I put a chunked up celery stalk, all the celery tops, 2 carrots cut in long sections, a few outer onion slices, several bay leaves, some fresh sage leaves, a big oregano sprig, and a couple sprigs of fresh thyme.  Plus part of a can of gf chicken broth.  I put it all around the bird and then when I needed to baste I just used the rest of the can of broth.  All these veggies and herbs contributed to the flavor of the gravy.  It wasn’t too dark but it was well balanced from all of these additions.  Of course, I fished them all out before the gravy was stirred up with the rice flour.

The sweet potato casserole was really tasty; cubes of peeled yams tossed with a mixture of honey and molasses as well as some butter and coconut oil.  Cinnamon with some powdered ginger added a spicy note.  I roasted it with the baking rolls which were both done before I put tom turkey in the oven.

We had the usual sides like mashed potatoes, green beans with toasted almonds and lemon peel, whole berry sauce and my mom’s raw cranberry relish made fresh the night before.  I used my grinder to coarse grind the washed cranberries and most of a naval orange cut into small pieces, then I sweetened the mixture with some sugar and it was fresh and puckery sweet.  The two year old loved it and had second and thirds on the relish.  He scorned the purchased whole berry sauce!

I brined the turkey with lots of fresh herbs and it turned out golden and succulent.  No gluten.  All good. We had cornbread stuffing with currents and herbs but it was a tad soggy if tasty. I think I put too much broth in it; next year I may try a stuffing based on my favorite GF French bead.

The pumpkin pie was very good; same filling as past years and my new gf crust was flavorful and crisp under it.  I put the recipe up a week or two ago in a posting.  You might try it for Christmas.  Make sure you get the center of the crust thin.  You can pre-bake the crust for ten minutes before adding the filling if your pies don’t get a crisp crust in your oven.

So, success achieved in the biggest meal of the year.  Now I know I can make a GF Christmas in a few weeks!