Living without you…

Kway teow (flat rice noodles) is gluten-free and so is bihun (rice vermicelli) and kueh chap (white rice sheets) but unfortunately, at all the food stalls and shops outside, they would use soy sauce in the cooking and that contains wheat so it is not gluten free. Yes, we do have gluten-free soy sauce but it is mighty expensive, over RM15.00 to around RM20.00 a bottle so one would need to use it sparingly…and besides, it does not actually taste like what we are used to.

That is why I would buy pad Thai…

*Pad Thai from Flavours Thai Kitchen*

…for my girl sometimes – she loves it a lot and it does not contain soy sauce; Thai fish sauce is all right, no wheat in the ingredients. The implication here is that there are other ways of cooking whereby we will not need to add soy sauce at all and it can taste really nice as well.

Well, last Friday, I bought some kway teow and taugeh (bean sprouts)…

…and there were some prawns in the freezer so I decided to fry the noodles for dinner my way, without the use of soy sauce. Usually my girl would go for lunch upon arriving in town on her way back from her school in the jungle and that would be around 3.00 p.m. at least. As a result of that, she would not be hungry by evening time so I thought this would be just nice for a light and simple dinner.

I pounded some chilies (4) and chopped all the cloves in a bulb of garlic till really fine and I also had some Thai basil leaves, curry leaves and spring onions from my garden, all finely chopped…

I heated a bit of oil in the wok, fried the garlic till golden brown, added the prawns followed by the chili, spring onions, Thai basil and curry leaves. Once everything was good and ready, I added the kway teow. You can add salt (and msg) if you wish but I just  used Thai fish sauce and a generous sprinkling of pepper. Then two eggs went in and lastly, I added the taugeh before dishing it all out…

Yes, it was very nice and one can have it with the Thai chili sauce…

…made in Thailand, if one so wishes. We used to buy our popular Malaysian brand but it has wheat in it (and the tomato sauce too) while this one contains modified corn starch and that is perfectly all right.

I guess all it takes would be a little getting used to – living without soy sauce…and the same goes for a lot of things as well like how we never use mittens in the kitchen. The dish cloth would be enough for the job should we need to remove some baking trays or whatever from the oven but my girl mentioned in passing that it would be nice to have one.

That was why when I saw them at a DIY shop here, selling for only RM3.90 each, less that USD1.00, I quickly grabbed two…

…for her and yes, she was delighted that day when she came home and saw them…and of course, I was glad she liked them. I really do know her so well.

I would say that we are getting on all right, living without wheat (and oats and barley) and soy sauce and are getting quite used to it by now.