Friday, April 8, 2011

Serious Eats - Gluten-free Tuesdays

I'm a fan of the Serious Eats web site.  It's New York based, but they have a lot of recipes and articles on experimental cooking. They also have a Gluten-free Tuesday's column.

Where to find soft corn tortillas in Edinburgh

If you like making your own tacos/burritos/quesadillas/etc, it's hard to find soft corn (maize) tortillas. The soft "corn" tortillas in most supermarkets have wheat. (The supermarkets usually have hard corn taco shells, though.)

I recently found that Lupe Pinto's has soft corn tortillas, from the Cool Chile Company in London. They come frozen in packs of a dozen, and contain (according to the list of ingredients) "stoneground maize (trace of lime), water, CMC, guar gum". (CMC is Carboxymethylcellulose, used as a firming agent and preservative, as well as a gluten substitute.)

The tortillas are good. Importantly, they are not brittle, so don't need to be steamed before using. They heat up well in a frying pan or Foreman grill.

Lupe Pinto's also has hard shell corn tortillas, and a lot of other Mexican and North American foods and spices.

According to Cool Chili's web site, the tortillas are gluten-free.

UPDATE (20 July 2011): Real Foods tell me that they have three brands of gluten-free torilla chips. (I'm unsure if they just mean chips vs soft tortillas, and I've not yet checked it myself.)

It's a good bet that you'll find gluten-free tortillas in a other natural/whole-food stores in town.