The problem is these cereals can hide innocuously in other foods, and they're not always easy to spot. It's a fact of life for the gluten-intolerant: sooner or later (the sooner the better) we all turn into rampant ingredient label readers.
The list of forbidden foods with gluten includes:
- Bread and buns (thus ruling out sandwiches and burgers, unless you forgo the bread and buns)
- Cake
- Pancakes
- Biscuits
- Cookies
- Crackers
- Wafers
- Pizza
- Pasta
- Wheat noodles (mee, mee sua/mian xian, meen)
- Fish cake, fish balls, fish paste, crabstick (if made/mixed with wheat flour)
- Soy sauce (contains wheat)
- Dumplings (like char siew pao/cha shao bao, sui jiao, wantan – there’s wheat in the skin)
- Dim sum (usually encased in wheat skins, but ask – the soybean skin ones are generally OK unless they use wheat flour paste to seal)
- Wheat-based wraps (tortillas, popiah skin if made with wheat)
- Roti prata (roti canai to Malaysians)
- Chapati
- Most breakfast cereals
- Beer (it's made from barley)
- Boiled barley drinks
- Horlicks, Milo, Ovaltine (anything with malt)
- Teriyaki/barbecue sauce (if thickened with wheat or flavoured with malt – read the label)
- Batter-fried items (e.g., sweet and sour fish/chicken/meat, KFC chicken). Tempura items, if made to the traditional recipe, should be coated in a rice flour batter, not wheat flour. But it is always wise to check with the kitchen, since chefs like to get creative with recipes.
- Bread-crumbed items (e.g., chicken cutlets or fish cutlets, that are coated with breadcrumbs)
- Sauces and gravies thickened with wheat flour (especially if you see the word roux, but check with the chef even if you don’t see this)
- Sausages and ham (if wheat is used as a filler – it usually is)
- Western meatballs and burger patties (usually contain breadcrumbs).
Soy sauce is usually OK in small amounts for me – apparently the production process breaks down the amount of gluten. Obviously this will vary on the brand of soy sauce, so venture at your own risk.
Rice and rice noodles – like meehoon or mifen – are great, as are rice-only crackers and breakfast cereals.
Beware of pan-fried meats, even if not coated with batter or breadcrumbs. Sometimes these get dusted with flour before they go into the pan, to prevent sticking. A case in point: foie gras may sometimes be flour-dusted before cooking.
Thosai, or dosa, that delicious South Indian thin crêpe of slightly soured batter, is traditionally made with rice and lentil flour only. I love thosai. But as with all items made with a batter, proceed with caution. Most places are fine, but some kitchens may face gluten contamination as all places serving thosai also serve the more popular roti prata as well. All it would take is for the cook to stir the two different batters back and forth using the same spoon without washing in between, and the thosai would turn bad for us GI sufferers.
And do note that noodles in the food stalls tend to be cooked in the same pot of boiling water or stock. So even if you order rice noodles, they may be rendered unsafe if cooked in the same pot of water previously used to cook wheat noodles. Proceed with caution once more.
One more thing. Most chicken rice meals should be safe, especially if you avoid the dark soy sauce it comes with. But I just noticed my favourite stall also chops its lemon chicken on the same board as the regular chicken, and as lemon chicken is always bread-crumbed, there may be residual gluten on the board that gets transferred to your order. Generally, they scrape the board with the cleaver fairly clean between orders, so most times my chicken comes to me free of the offending crumbs. But if the preceding order is for that dastardly lemon bird, stray crumbs may escape the cleaver and adhere to yours, so it's good to be observant and ask that they wipe the board clean if the order before yours is for the crumbed version.
Paranoid? Maybe a little. But I'll take a little obsessive watchfulness over intestinal pain and suffering any day.
No comments:
Post a Comment