New food discovery

[upnabout]

Recently I have been going round various shops looking for g/f products. Last week I went to an oriental supermarket. There were several rice noodle based products that I bought. I also took a chance on some rice crackers - not what you would expect really - they looked like uncooked pappadoms. But they are great - two mins in the microwave and they are like giant prawn crackers! I was really surprised how good they are.

The shop I went to was a new Vietnamese supermarket - top end of Walworth Road near Elephant and Castle, SE1 - can't find it online but it is near the junction with Larcom St.

The company that produces them is called Longdan. They have quite a few products so I guess they are available in oriental supermarkets elsewhere. The ones I got were labelled 'rice cracker with white sesame seed' but there were a couple of other varieties. They don't look much in the pack, in fact they look decidedly lacklustre. I was totally surprised what they turned out like. Really, give them a go

[barny]

thats good too here love chinese and have been avoiding it have tried rice noogles from morrisons gf but they are yuk lol x

[Hidden]

Hi there, this is a very good point that there are many naturally gf foods from around the world out there beyond supermarkets.

I also have a Vietnamese supermarket near where I live in Bristol on the vibrant Glos rd

I buy tapioca starch and rice flour from them as well as rice papers which are a really easy pie topping instead of pastry and of course great for spring rolls. Their selection of rice and tapioca noodles is bigger than the whole free from selection in my local supermarkets so for those in Bristol who want to check it out:

withoutgluten.org/place/hun...

Also Asian supermarkets often have a really good range of naturally gf flours, spices and curry pastes and I buy 1.5Kg of rice flour for just over £2.00 so to me not getting food on prescription is no big deal and I am not reliant on a chain of events.

One really well worth checking out for those in the Bristol area is the Bristol sweet mart in Easton and they sell 1Kg of rice flakes and puffed rice for just over £1.00 whereas the supermarkets sell Kalo ones for around £3.00 for around 300g

withoutgluten.org/place/bri...

So well done upnabout for bringing this up and I hope that it inspires other coeliac to check out other shops in their area.

[freelancer in reply to Hidden]

Those rice/tapioca papers are good for making salad wraps. You don't have to make them particularly authentically Vietnamese - just dip in water and wrap up the salady stuff (it's fiddly and mine look very lumpy, not like the proper summer rolls you'd get in a Vietnamese restaurant, but they still taste OK and are good for packed lunches with a dip).

The ones I've got are also Longdan (from a Chinese supermarket) as are the rice noodles in my cupboard. Longdan seems to have a few shops around London and it looks as if you can buy online too (no connection - I'd never heard of them until I checked the packets and googled).

Definitely agree Asian supermarkets are a really good resource, but the labelling can sometimes be a bit lacking. I got glutened by some rice flour I'd bought very cheaply from an Indian supermarket - though when I looked at the packet I did realise it listed all the other types of flour also produced by the same company, presumably in the same building...

[dobido]

hi everyone i found the vietnamese wraps to be really good and when i thought i was only g/f i found in a shop some sauces brand Tiger Tiger which where g/f they had red thai curry,sticky barbeque and also lime and corriander which made excellent g/f dips even my partner steve was impressed (Do be careful because not all tiger tiger products are g/f).The sauces make excellent marinated as well they came from a shop called b+m for anyone who doesn,t know them they are a saver shop and don,t always have the same products week in week out and some stuff is about a month or 2 from sell-by date.I also use an indian supermarket and got gram flour really cheap i,m lucky because ours as an english speaking assistant who is indian and he was able to find out wether or not it was suitable as the writing was in foriegn was able to get every herb and spice at arouind a quarter of the price of the supermarket.As for rice noodles i agree the best place is the chinese superstores are alot cheaper and they seem really helpful as to what you can do with the ingriendents you can buy.