WTF?! Why Is There Wheat in My Rice Noodles? Cashew Chicken (with Rice, Dammit)

We've missed Thai food. The entire Asian pantheon of food appears more GF-friendly than a lot of other cuisines, but often that means that the gluten is sneaky and hidden in lists of ingredients that we can't actually read, or buried in the process for making items that we're not terribly familiar with. This happened recently, alas. I was really excited to make lad na (Thai wide rice noodles in gravy) until I found out that fermented soybean paste (tao jiao) is made with wheat or barley. And all the fresh rice noodles in the stores near us include wheat.

Seriously?!?!

OK, it's been a great chance to educate myself about all sorts of things, like that fact that wheat has been cultivated in Asian for the last 11,000 years so I really shouldn't be so surprised that it shows up in recipes. It's all that sneaky stuff that gets me, like the fact that so many things are fermented with wheat or barley that DOESN'T SHOW UP ON THE LABEL. This is why all the GF people are so bitter.

I don't really anticipate that I'm going to be tying up blocks of fermented soybeans in straw and hanging them off the rafters to cure anytime soon (read: ever), and possibly the recipes for fresh rice noodles are deceptively simple. But I think there are some upcoming adventures in from-scratch Asian cooking in my future (we can already manage our own from-scratch hoisin sauce, thank you very much). In the meantime, I'm learning a lot about all the many, many, many different ways that soybeans can be fermented and looking for tao jiao substitutes. And also looking for an app that will translate food labels for me, because I don't have time to learn to read Chinese and Japanese and Thai and Korean.

My consolation prize was this recipe for cashew chicken. It's been hiding in a section on stir-fries (which I really should like more than I do), so I only found it recently. As with so many weeknight recipes, this is adapted from Mark Bittman, this time from The Best Recipes in the World.

Cashew Chicken 

2 tablespoons canola oil
1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into strips
2 stalks celery, thinly sliced on the bias
1 cup UNSALTED cashews (I really can't emphasize this part enough)
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/2 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
4 scallions, chopped
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine (which is also can contain gluten. Sigh.), dry sherry, or white wine
2-3 tablespoons tamari soy sauce
1 teaspoon dark sesame oil

Heat the oil in a large skillet or wok, then stir-fry the chicken until it starts to brown a bit, about 4 minutes. Remove the chicken from the pan. Add the celery and saute for about a minute. Add the cashews, garlic, and ginger and cook for about 30 seconds, stirring.

Add the scallions, then the wine and tamari. Cook for a couple of minutes, so that a little of liquid bubbles away and the sauce thickens. Add the chicken, cook for another minute or two, then stir in the sesame oil. Serve over rice.