A gluten-free Camelot -- still a fantasy

In an earlier post I lauded King Arthur Flour for finally introducing gluten-free products. My enthusiasm has been slightly dampened with the arrival of the first catalog highlighting their new product line. Let me tell you why.

I think of King Arthur Flour as the Frederick's of Hollywood of flour. They provide fairly vanilla forms of flour -- although at crazy prices -- but also carry flours and related products you don't recognize, don't know how to use and fear, a little. A brief journey through the recent catalog uncovers Italian-style flour (Italians have special flour?), dried buttermilk powder, cake enhancer, french lames (you use them to score bread because, as you know, a knife is useless in those critical situations) and some kind of liquid that you add to cookies to make them taste like cookies. See? Just like adding garter belts as complicated as suspension bridges to already undressed people makes them sexier.

In other words, King Arthur Flour, already credible in the exotic baking products racket, should carry gluten-free products. I was very excited when the catalog arrived today.

And I'm disappointed. Oh, sure -- the catalog lists all of the standard flours and mixes, from tapioca starch to chocolate cake mix. That's the problem! In terms of standard gluten-free products, Bob's Red Mill has that market wrapped up. I don't need a vendor for standard stuff. I expect a company that sells lilac sugar pearls (you use them to decorate cupcakes, in case that wasn't self-evident in the description) to move beyond gluten-free pancake mix.

KAF deepened my disappointment on page 6. And 7. And 8. In the two-page gluten-free spread, there's a recipe for white sandwich bread (the very food used to illustrate ubiquity). There's a sweet column by the product development manager, and a promise that everyone -- gluten-free diet or no -- will enjoy the products. But when you turn the page, it's as if the gluten-free section never existed. The very next recipe in the catalog calls for hi-gluten flours, in fact, and none of the other recipes or columns suggest ways to substitute gluten-free flour in your baking.

Pages 4 and 5. The gluten-free ghetto. Nice try, King Arthur. I expect more, and I think you're missing a market -- gluten-free bakers (especially those that have already demonstrated their willingness to purchase expensive baking supplies) are childishly excited to be able to use conventional baking recipes. They're willing to experiment and try new products. And yet there's nothing in your catalog I can't find at the local health food store. Why pay $6.50 (that's minimum, by the way) in shipping for the same supplies?

My final assessment? I appreciate the effort, KAF, but I need a better reason to weed through the elephant-face underwear and fuzzy handcuffs when I can shop at Target for less money and in broad daylight.

Happy Celiac Awareness month!

Apparently Celiac Awareness month had to fight it out with Sandwich month, or Toenail Awareness month, or Grass Seed month, or something along those lines. However, it is now official. Hug your local celiac patient (gently).

And to celebrate, here's a wonderful recipe for a flourless cake from the Oregonian, passed to me by a compassionate colleague. It's the kind of cake that is so dense that, if you bake it in a round pan, it's a cake. Bake it in a square pan, it's brownies. Either way, fantastic with gluten-free ice cream. And it doesn't require any crazy ingredients. I had everything at home already.

I would have included a picture, but it barely made it out of the springform pan before it was consumed. Yum.

The Magic Card

We recently took a vacation in Istanbul. And despite the stunning mosques, the ancient town wall, the beautiful minarets, and deafening call to prayer (which seemed to initiate very little prayer and woke us up at 5:30 am) the most spell-binding thing we saw happened at dinner each night, when JFG would hand the waiter a small piece of paper, after which the waiter would produce gluten-free food.

It wasn't money he was handing over -- it was a document we began to refer to as the Magic Card. It was a print-out from Celiac Travel, a blog that provides information on safe traveling for people with celiac disease, and explained in detail (and in Turkish!) what foods JFG could and could not eat. Even better, the card was emphatic -- perhaps slightly hyperbolicly -- about the implications if safe food was not served.

At each restaurant, the waiter would carefully read the card, nod his head slowly, and lean over JFG to scan the menu. He'd point to items, turn to JFG, and say, "This? Not for you. This? Not for you. This? For you." Every single restaurant, every single time. Occasionally the waiter would take the card to the chef and come out with recommendations. But perhaps the most amazing moment was when we handed a card to a restaurant owner who said, "Oh! You're the second person today to come in with this card! Other lady -- we fix her vegetables and meat and rice, she love it." And JFG did too. And he made it seven days in Turkey without once, to our knowledge, being glutenized. We certainly don't have that track record in the U.S.

Celiac Travel makes these cards available for free on its website in 49 different languages, including Estonian, Urdu and Basque. You can buy similar laminated cards from Triumph Dining, but in limited languages. If you're traveling, especially to some where exotic, printing cards from Celiac Travel gets the job done.

1,000-year-old Chinese chef breaks the gluten-free world open wide

Kwan's of Salem is very unassuming. From the outside, it looks like a run-down version of Disneyland's interpretation of a Chinese temple, like one that would be located in Yuma, AZ. On the inside, it looks like the kind of generic Asian restaurant Lucy and Desi would have gone to, where Lucy would have loudly mangled dishes' names and spoken in exaggerated fake Chinese to the server. Lucy and Desi when they lived in 1950s Hollywood, not Lucy and Desi in New York. Got the picture? Lots of Chinese jade souvenirs, plastic swords, faded red- and gold- lacquered tables, servers in cheap tuxes, etc.

But we were desperate for vegetables and rice, and had developed a deep suspicion of past go-tos. We pulled out the iPhones, searched the GlutenFreed app, and found one option, Kwans. Kwans opened in Salem, OR 33 years ago after the chef came to America sponsored by Gerry Frank's family.

We called. After a year of this life, we can tell the safety of the food by the tone of voice on the phone.

Kwan himself answered. When JFG asked about GF food, Kwan assured us that his staff understood both wheat allergies and celiac disease (the mere comprehension of the difference is a positive sign!), and that they had more the forty dishes they could prepare safely.

When we arrived, Kwan met us at the door. He led us to the table, handed us menus, explained at length his culinary philosophy (we couldn't really understand it but he seemed very sincere). JFG explained what he'd like to order and Kwan made it immediately, making sure we understood the changes in the dish that would be required to make the food GF. He also asked about every other possible food issue -- water purity, eggs, yeast, meat, shellfish, dairy. Not sure this was necessary but it certainly was thorough.

Here's how you know your restaurant understands celiac disease (see right). The check is itemized by the ingredients the food does not contain, and he was even more conservative then we might have been in our own kitchen.

So here's my review. The food was fairly conventional Chinese, the kind you'd get at a restaurant that also serves french fries and hamburgers for the kiddos. But the vegetables were fresh -- he even substituted green beans for peas in one dish because he'd just gotten the beans that morning -- and most importantly, JFG could eat anything on the menu including the ginger-chocolate ice cream sundae. We showed Kwan the app we used on the phone to find him, and while I'm sure that he can survive another 33 years without the celiacs of mid-Oregon, I hope others use it too.

Old school Chinese cooked by a restaurateur who really cares that it's safe. Tell him you read about him on a blog -- it will blow his mind. Be prepared to have him sit down at your booth to see it on your iPhone.

King Arthur Flour introduces gluten-free mixes!

As you know, I feel like a failed housewife when I use mixes -- like I might as well stop vaccuuming and grocery shopping and just smoke long cigarettes and pet the dog all day.

But when I contemplate gluten-free baking recipes, which frequently call for several kinds of flour and strange chemical substances I cave to a few tried-and-true mixes.

Finally, King Arthur Flour (definitely the go-to company for advanced bakers, the kind of place that understands the need for -- and sells -- 14 kinds of salt) has released new gluten-free baking mixes. They've also greatly enhanced their gluten-free website, with new recipes, advice and information about cooking for folks with allergies.

Interestingly, as a side note, they advocate baking gluten-free food in a separate oven from glutenized food. Sigh. Thank goodness I have two ovens.

Anyway, thanks, King Arthur Flour. I'll post "Celiac-by-Marriage approved" recipes as I try 'em!

And the gold medal for gluten-free dining goes to . . .

. . . Andina Restaurant on Glisan in Portland. Two friends recommended it as a gluten-free friendly establishment, and I must say that the experience went WELL beyond the server's ability to understand what it means to provide GF food. In order of astonishingness:

1. The server was able to find the GF menu right away (seriously, sometimes they have to go print it off from the corporate website).

2. A second server noticed JFG's shirt ("Save the wheat -- Eat gluten-free!") and brought over a second gluten-free menu, just in case the first server had not. The second server also assured us that his mom had celiac disease and that the restaurant was very knowledgeable about how to keep food safe. He actually stopped by again a couple of times to make sure everything was okay.

3. After we ordered from the fantastic, tapas-heavy menu, the server brought bread with several dipping sauces, and then brought GF fried yucca and sauce in a separate dish for JFG. I ended up mostly eating friend yucca, which is a lot like really robust french fries. Yum. Whose going to eat bread with purple stuff on it when you have huge french fries?

4. The food we ordered was delicious -- roasted asparagus, bay scallops in parmesan, cheeses with quince paste, potato with fresh corn salsa and a chocolate meringue mousse -- and the servers were so thorough and so knowledgeable that we didn't even wonder about cross contamination. JFG also had squash soup with pork belly, but I agreed to stay married to him nonetheless. You have to make exceptions for the sick and fragile.

5. The price was actually pretty reasonable for tapas, especially with fantastic service.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "Wow -- I can hear their arteries slamming shut!" In our defense, to not order everything on the menu would have been like going to Paris and shopping at H&M. I love H&M like I love eating healthy, but I'm not insane. Plus we didn't eat dinner.

So, thanks very much David and the rest of the fantastic staff at Andina. It's such a great experience to be able to order from an adequate menu, feel safe that the food is being prepared correctly and not have to reluctantly cross another restaurant off our list when we discover, four hours later, that the food was indeed glutenized.

Shhhh . . . this is a special moment for me. It's the first time I've given five rice flours to anything.

How to upgrade gluten-free bread

Almond-flax gluten free bread is better heated up with peanut butter and Nutella. Just an observation.