Introduction Introduction
 
A few years ago, I sat with my husband and two children in a local Chinese restaurant trying desperately to find something on the menu I could eat that was gluten free. Two women sat down at the table next to us and one of them proceeded to tell her dining companion that she was under strict doctor’s orders to avoid gluten. A kindred spirit, I thought, until she laughed it off and stated authoritatively, “It’s no big deal; I just can’t order the noodles.” My husband reacted calmly as I tried to jump out of my seat—and into their conversation—putting his hand on my arm to keep me in place while quietly shaking his head “no.” “It’s not your concern,” he said.
 
Oh yes, it is.
 
My own experience with gluten intolerance started shortly after the birth of my second child. I started fighting off a bevy of bizarre neurological symptoms, beginning with localized nerve pain and eventually growing into facial numbness and paralysis of the left side of my face. At its worst, the numbness traveled down the entire left side of my body. Some of these symptoms remained firmly in place for a couple of years, while others retreated as quickly as they appeared; all were puzzling and scary. About four years into this, and not a single step closer to finding an answer, I turned my focus from fruitlessly searching for a diagnosis to improving my general health. I started a one-month elimination diet, cutting out most foods that were allergenic or inflammatory, including gluten, dairy, soy, corn, caffeine, alcohol, and sugar. Three weeks later, I felt better than I had in years and was completely symptom free. At the end of the month, I took that first bite of a much-missed bagel and—whoosh!—nearly instant facial numbness.
 
I had discovered my body’s aversion to gluten.
 
At that point I stopped eating gluten completely, which includes anything containing wheat, barley, rye, or cross-contaminated oats. I don’t have a problem with this when I’m eating at home, but the story changes once I walk out the front door. Dining in any restaurant can be difficult, but going out for Asian food remains my biggest frustration. As I soon discovered, many of the essential ingredients in Asian cooking are wheat-based. Dumplings, pancakes, and many types of noodles are blatant offenders, but it’s the omnipresent sauces, quietly painting each bite with gluten, that are harder to avoid. Soy sauce, a condiment made from fermented soybeans and wheat, is an exceedingly common ingredient in Asian cooking. Other sauces, such as teriyaki sauce and some peanut sauces, are based on soy sauce. Hoisin sauce and oyster sauce are routinely thickened with wheat flour; hoisin sauce may also be sweetened with a wheat paste. In trying to dodge these roadblocks, it can be hard finding even a simple stir-fry that’s safe to eat. Certainly over the past few years the whole concept of gluten-free dining has progressed at a rapid speed, but with much of the commercial focus on getting that bread, that pizza, or that cake back on the plate. But what about other foods that we all love, such as Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, which are some of my personal favorites? I decided that it’s time to shine the spotlight on Asian cooking.
 
During my gluten-eating days, I frequented Asian restaurants in New York City, Portland, and San Francisco with great vigor. (Not to mention a revelatory food-focused visit to Tokyo with my husband.) As a recipe developer I gobbled up not only the delicacies set before me, but information as well. I studied...