Wheat Free (and other allergens)

[KeeperOfTheGood]

Hey oh

What do you do to accommodate specific allergens in food ingredients?

By way of example, having read every label of every brand of soy sauce sold locally to me, I have not found one that is wheat free. I know that siliacs disease is too common a disease for there not to be a wheat free version, but I have not encountered it.

So, in looking at a recipe that has such an ingredient, how do you go about figuring out what to substitute, or do you simply leave that ingredient out?

Among my family members, there is intolerance's to full allergies to wheat, refined sugar, chocolate, red peppers, oranges, cashews, pistachios, tomatoes.... Makes cooking a real adventure at times, but I can easily leave these things out as ingredients, but when they are embedded in a product...

[chefmikesworld]

A while ago I had a personal chef client that was allergic to everything (or so it seemed) and with the help of a gluten intolerant friend of mine I wrote some stuff on Gluten Intolerance that you may find of interest.

http://www.restaurantedge.com/index.phtml?catid=1768
http://www.restaurantedge.com/index.phtml?catid=1769

As far as substitutions etc. it depends.

If the elimination of the product is going to have an effect on the final product of course you do not want to eliminate it. As far as the soy sauce, there are alot of wheat free soy sauces on the market. Perhaps try to look in health food stores if you can't find them on your grocery store shelf. Or perhaps look for Tamari's instead of Soy Sauces.

If you have any further questions, feel free to leave it here or drop me an email.

Peace,
Cheffy