Thanksgiving - More GF, Nondairy recipes

My previous post on Thanksgiving carelessly omitted a few items

Here are some more recipes we enjoyed this year. Hopefully next year, I will think of a few more to add. Again, too busy cooking and eating to take pictures, but will try and add them in later.

Vegan Green Beans with mustard seeds

1 lb fresh green beans
4 T olive oil
1 T whole mustard seeds (I usually use yellow)
1-2 T chopped garlic
1 t salt
1 t sugar

Blanch the green beans for about 4 minutes. Let drain in colander. Heat the olive oil in a wok or frying pan (I like the wok). Add the mustard seeds. They will start to pop. Throw in the garlic and reduce the heat to low. The garlic will start to brown. Once it does, throw in the green beans and stir them around a bit. Add the salt and sugar, and make sure the beans are all coated with oil, mustard seeds, salt and sugar.

Transfer to serving platter and, well, serve.

Gluten Free Pie Crusts (Thanks to Bette Hagman)

This makes 3 crusts - enough for 3 open pies or 1 open and 1 closed. I love this, because if you go to the trouble of making up a pie crust (and this makes a mess with all the starches), you should get at least a couple of pies out of it. You could double the recipe and freeze the crusts you aren't using in the next few days with no loss of flavor. We don't leave the crusts in the freezer very long, though, as pies are always in demand.

1 cup sweet rice flour (not white rice flour, best source lately is Authentic Foods on internet)
1/2 cup tapioca starch
1/2 cup corn starch
1/4 cup potato starch (easy to find in Jewish groceries around Passover)
1 rounded teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup nondairy margarine
1/2 cup butter flavor Crisco (can use 100% crisco or vegan margarine if you like. Butter may be OK but soften it a bit first)

1 T cider vinegar (sure substitute white vinegar)
1 egg
3-4 T cold water
sweet rice flour for rolling
Pie plate (sprayed with Pam or similar)

Add the dry ingredients together. If you are running low on potato or corn or tapioca starch, you can substitute among them a bit, but really for success go out and buy all 4 flours before you start. Putting the dry ingredients together may be messy. Stir them, and then add the margarine and Crisco. Use a pastry cutter and cut until they are the size of peas, but not as small as rice.  Mix together the egg, vinegar, and water and add it all at once to the flour/shortening mixture. I use a fork at this stage to mix it together well. Then I like to get in there and knead it for a while, maybe with a little sweet rice flour on my  hands.

Split into 3 portions (I use baggies) and let the dough rest in the refrigerator. Usually I do this a day or two before, but half an hour is long enough. If you are an expert pastry roller, you can probably skip this step, but I for one am not. Take the dough out, sprinkle wax paper with gf flour, put a ball of dough in between 2 pieces of wax paper, and roll it to the correct size. Carefully peel wax paper from one side, then put it back on. Now flip it over, peel off the other side, and flip into pregreased pie plate. Normal pie crusts are more durable; you don't need to pre-peel the wax paper but believe me, it really helps with the fragile gf crusts.

If you need to prebake the pie crust (I prebake for pecan pie, don't bother for pumpkin or apple), you DO NOT need to weigh it down - it won't puff up badly if you prebake for 8 minutes at 350 F.

Gluten Free non-dairy Pie Fillings (thanks to Joy of Cooking and Libby's Can)

Pumpkin Pie - I use the directions on the can of Libby's but substitute 1 cup of coconut creamer (or similar nondairy creamer) instead of the 12 oz of evaporated milk. The key to the pie is mix the spices together very well with the sugar, or you get clumps of spices which are tasty but not that attractive. I bake it at 350 for 35-45 minutes. When it looks set, it is good to go. The year I figured out I really need reading glasses I misread the amount of sugar to add from the can and only added 1/4 cup (do add the full 3/4 cup). Yes, it was time to get reading glasses.

Pecan Pie - 1/2 cup of sugar, 3 eggs, 1/2 cup of maple syrup, 1/2 cup light corn syrup, 5 tablespoons margarine, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 Tablespoon of Kahlua, 2 cups of pecans. Start by toasting the pecans about 4 minutes/side at 350 oven. Taste - if you burn them, throw them out and start again. If slightly underdone, this is fine. Skip this step entirely and you can have raw-tasting pecans with overcooked custard - rookie mistake you can easily avoid. Mix all the other ingredients together, perhaps mixing the eggs up first and adding everything in. I measure both syrups into the same cup measure and microwave it for 20 seconds so it flows out of the cup better.  Now add the pecans. Add the whole mess to the somewhat prebaked pie crust, which is still hot. If you want to be fancy, you can wash the pie crust with egg white just when it comes out of the oven, but I usually don't bother. Bake it at 350 for about 45 minutes. Most of the top should look "set."

Apple - Cut up about 7-8 cups of apples and add sugar (can substitute 3/4 cup of cranberries for same volume of apples for a nice tart taste, adjust sugar somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 cup). Add 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 2 T of sweet rice flour to the fruit mixture, stir it well. Microwave the fruit mixture for 5 minutes on high to start cooking it (will still be mostly uncooked). This makes it fit into the pie crust better and cook faster but you're not eating mushy apples at the end. Bake 425 for 15 minutes and then 350 for 30. Slip the cookie sheet with Al foil on it under the pie plate when you turn the temperature down or it will boil up and spill onto the bottom of your oven. Once it boils up a bit, you know it's done.

As you can see, if you toast the pecans ahead of time, you can start the apple first, putting the oven at 425, then bring it down to 350, bake the pecan crust while you get everything set up, then put in the pecan and pumpkin in with the apple and have 3 pies done in less than 75 minutes.

This assumes you can find a can opener for the can of pumpkin, but that's a whole other story. What is your favorite household item to use if you can't find the can opener? Let me know in the comments, along with any suggestions or improvements for these recipes.

And Happy Thanksgiving, hooray! hooray! hooray! Aren't you glad you're not a Turkey on this Thanksgiving Day!