Well, sadly, I never did make it out to the Renaissance festival to risk eating the gluten free foods they were serving this year.  I was trying to get a group of people (normal people mostly) together to try to do a food comparision, but that fell through.   I wound up going again and sticking with my chicken salad sandwiches and sangria.

September and October were my busy times at work as well, so I haven't had much time, especially with October being Halloween.  I did manage to start up a hard cider however, and I'm hoping to start up a second one in a week or two that will contain cinnamon, nutmeg and oak.  We'll see if I can manage.

In other news, I did help throw a gluten free birthday party in October.  Sadly, I didn't keep the recipes, so I'll try to say what I recall.  We did a gluten free rahmschnitzel with fries, and what was supposed to be a molten chocolate cake.  We also attempted to fry gluten free ravioli.

The results were that next time, we need to bread the ravioli before frying.  It was surprisingly difficult to find gluten free ravioli as well.  I saw certain brands at stores whose website declared they had a gluten free line, but unfortunately the store didn't carry them, but we finally found a bag from one store.  The fries turned out ok, they were simply frozen fries that were deep fryed in a vat of peanut oil, nothing special about these.

The Rahmschnitzel was a bit more difficult.  A day before, I baked a loaf of gluten free bread that I mostly followed from the sandwich bread recipe on Serious Eats.  <link to seriouseats.com>   I ate a few slices, just to see how it tasted, really...  And then sliced it and dried them out in the oven. The next day, I sent them through the food processor and voila, gluten free breadcrumbs, and it only took me some eggs, oil, yeast, rice flour, potato flour and tapioca flour.

To cut down on costs, we used pork, which I pounded flat and sprinkled lemon juice on for about 30 minutes while I prepared the dredge.  I used rice flour seasoned with a bit of salt, a bit of garlic, pepper and paprika.  I then dredged the escalopes in  egg, and breadcrumbs, then fried in a mix of oil and butter.   I fried both sides and stuck them onto a pan and into the oven that I was keeping at a low 300 degrees to finish the cooking, and to keep the pork and the fries warm while I was preparing more of the same.

Once the pork was finished and in the oven, I made the sauce.  I took some of the oil/butter, and because I was low, added more butter, and sauteed a mix of baby bella mushrooms and standard white mushrooms.  At this point I was experimenting and split pans.  In one pan, I started a gluten free roux.  Some oil/butter, flour, and finally a liquid and the mushrooms.  Unfortunately, I used both wine and cream, so there was a bit more alcohol flavor than I would want, but it had a nice thick sauce/gravy texture.  Reduce the wine in a separate pot first, next time.  In the other pan, I kept half the mushrooms and dumped in the wine, letting it simmer and reduce and then adding cream.  This one was a bit thin.    After learning from these mistakes, I then combined the two together anyways.  These were also seasoned with garlic, pepper, salt and paprika.

Finally, there was dessert.  I followed a recipe from a book, one that I've made before, but somehow, it didn't turn out right.  It might be because the cups were higher, it might be because the oven ran hotter than at the parents, but it was supposed to be a molten chocolate cake, made from a mix of melted chocolate and butter, and very well frothed eggs and then cooked in the oven in a hot water bath. It was more like a chocolate mousse cake.  Still very light in texture, soft but not still runny in the middle at all.  We still ate it with freshly made whipped cream.  One of which was a standard vanilla whipped cream using vanilla extract and sugar, the other which was made using Dekyuper's michigan cherry liquor just so I could make an alcoholic, flavored whipped cream.

On a side note, the breadcrumbs, of which I still had some left over, were also used in making meatloaf a  week later.  (When I make food, I try to make enough to last a week, so I ate the rahmschnitzel for a week, and then made meatloaf . I just finished the last of said meatloaf of it two days ago).