Ructions

Once again, I have missed the current installment of Pads and the Unibrow Do Texas. I'm not sure, but I think the episode involved Tweets (or possibly twits) and Heather getting sent home in a hail of gunfire.

Or so I gather.

The reason I missed my favorite show this week was that I was having a Top Chef experience all my own courtesy of Sir, the holiday season, and the good people at our local high-end pan-Asian-but-mostly-Japanese chow house, of which we have been loyal fans for years. The restaurant has proved to be one of those places where a wheat-free warrior can present herself for a post-movie meal and - with minimum fuss - be rewarded with gluten-free delights such as foie gras with roasted pineapple and eel salsa; sous vide salmon with pistachios and pine nuts; and tuna with tomato yuzu chutney. Wash it all down with a sake-and-cucumber on ice and one is able either to celebrate a new four-star-find or recover from a regrettable two-thumbs-down turkey. Either way it's difficult to lose.

Since none of the flicks we are desperate to see has as yet come to the Valley (although there are tantalizing rumours that Gary Oldman's new Tinker, Tailor etc. will be appearing only 40 miles away come mid-January), we showed up for dinner sans cinematic hors d'ouevre. The Kid Squid's absence and something akin to holiday giddiness led us absentmindedly to peruse the chef's tasting menu, something we rarely do for three reasons:

• the Squid refuses to sit still long enough for the rest of the family to eat more than two courses. Since he is not a dessert eater, this tragic state of affairs used to result in my being denied my favorite part of a restaurant meal. As most eateries of my acquaintance are unable to offer a gluten-free sweet other than creme brulee, however, this is no longer the heartbreaker it was in my distant cake and tart-consuming past
• Sir and I have a deep suspicion of chefs' menus. Having experienced (let there be no mistake) a few by chefs of great renown, we have come to the conclusion that sitting through a four-hour dinner of small courses is like watching avant garde theater or a runway show of Lacroix couture. To be sure, one admires the artistry and skill on display and utters knowingly appreciative oohs and aahs, but it's difficult to come away with a sense of one's soul having been satisfied. But that's just us. Heathens.
• Sir and I are usually too fiscally responsible to spring for a tasting menu. See above.

But how, on this occasion, could we resist oysters, quail eggs, diver scallops, and (be still my heart) wild boar? Not easily, that's for sure. Besides, the number of times I've seen wild boar on a menu hereabouts I could count on one hand and not even worry about carpal tunnel syndrome.

The bill of fare was admirably effuse in its descriptions and all the offerings looked pretty safe, gluten-wise. I double-checked with our server, who said she would, in turn, double-check with Chef and that was that. Sir and I sat back with our ridiculous cocktails and waited expectantly for the delights that would no doubt soon be coming our way.

Soon afterwards, the First Course arrived: a quicksmoked Kumamoto oyster with Reisling caviar, pickled cornichon, pearl onion and paddlefish roe. The dish was served in a large glass snifter with a lid on it, just like they have been doing at Alinea since time immemorial and everywhere else on the planet for the past three years or so. Still, it was the first time I'd experienced such sophistication in the Valley and it was pretty exciting, I must say. Chef had clearly been practicing with his spherification kit to produce the sparkly-sweet caviar and we contentedly slurped away, enjoying the play of sea and smoke. Sir thought the cornichon was briny overkill and a long discussion about acidity and its desirability ensued.

Our conversation became so involved that we failed, at first, to notice the rather excessive hiatus between our first and second courses. Soon, however, just as my fascinating exposition about traditional Japanese pickling methods was winding down, our server appeared. She apologized for the delay and explained that Chef was in the process of knocking his be-toqued head against the wall, since most of the upcoming courses contained soy sauce in various guises and required, in her words, 'reworking'.

***

I'd forgotten that the rest of the world believes soy sauce is filled with gluten!

***

You will no doubt remember that over a year ago, newly reeling from my quack's gluten-free decrees, I engaged in some extensive internet research and concluded that - even though wheat is used in its production - shoyu contains no gluten because during its distillation the protein chains are broken down into their constituent amino acids. Since I have not yet been able to raise sufficient funds to undertake the necessary laboratory testing myself, I must confess this belief is more a matter of faith than hard science. Nonetheless, I stick by it and defy anyone to convince me differently.

Clearly, though, Chef had failed to receive the memo.

I was instantly filled with remorse. My desire to cause as little fuss in restaurants as is humanly possible is well-recorded. If I had known I was going to cause a kitchen kerfuffle I would have either a) ordered off the a la carte menu as per usual or b) kept my mouth shut and discreetly left to one side any obviously gluten-filled morsels. It had certainly not been my intention to require that every dish coming out of the expeditor's window (at a Japanese restaurant, no less) contain no soy sauce! I considered passing my wheat wisdom on to the cooks (who were no doubt by this point cursing the heavens and punters like me who have outrageously faddy dietary requirements), but Sir threatened to walk out if I did. We were at this point committed, he pointed out, and who were we to say the establishment's hash slingers weren't enjoying the thrilling novelty of cooking something new? Dubiously but obediently, I agreed to take what came with good grace.

From this point onwards the dishes Sir and I ate differed in several important respects, so I decided to document the meal for posterity. I didn't have my trusty wee Olympus with me and was therefore obliged to use my Smartyphone. An additional technical snafu occured when I accidentally set the camera to 'video' and I was forced subsequently to edit the footage using the device's rather troublesome screen-capture function. This was helpfully demonstrated to me by the Kid Squid when we finally returned home six hours later.

Second Course
Tuna poke with caramelized onion puree, tasaka seaweed salad, Hawaiian sea salt and a poached quail egg. We detected few obvious dissimilarities except for the soy schmear on Sir's gluten-filled plate. It is possible I was also missing the onions, but it was hard to tell without a direct taste comparison (an impossibility without the risk of approbation and flying santoku hurled from the direction of the kitchen). The quail egg was roughly the size of my thumbnail and oozed everywhere when I jabbed it. It was like eating a very diminutive steak tartare. Divine.

Gluten-filled poke

Gluten-free poke

Third Course
The restaurant's signature sushi tasting, which has long been a soyless sakana serenade. On this occasion it consisted of maguro with onion, hamachi with yuzu paste, sake with mustard miso and mint, and suzuki with lemon and shiso:

Fourth Course
Wild mushroom soup with truffle oil. This took ages and ages since, as it turned out, they had to come up with something completely different for me. I was presented with a bowl of heavenly clam soup with enoki. The enoki were a revelation - they acted and tasted just like very al dente strands of pasta. I was inspired.

Fifth Course
A pan-seared diver scallop with edamame humus, green peas, haricot verts, and cinnamon foam. This was a complete triumph. The scallop sat atop a nabe of hot salt on which were arrayed toasty cinnamon sticks and star anise. I was lacking the cinnamon foam but didn't really miss it what with all the aromatic waftings going on. The scallop was the size of a hockey puck, and the texture of one, too - if the puck in question were made of warm melting butter.

Gluten-filled scallop

Gluten-free scallop

Sixth Course
The much-anticipated wild boar chop with a sweet potato croquette, lamb meatball, and mustard greens. This was the only course about which I had actually been concerned in the first place and with good reason, as it turned out. Chef duly pulled out all the stops to give me something special. He went to the trouble of de-boning the chop and adorning it with all manner of deliciously wasabi-enrobed veg, such that I felt healthy and virtuous as well as gluten-free. The meat itself was pink, juicy, and rich. I permitted Sir to pick up his bone and gnaw on it, just this once.

Gluten-filled boar chop

Gluten-free boar chop

Final Course
Pumpkin souffle. As far as we could tell, the two plates were identical: the souffle (unfortunately fallen by the time I was able to arrange a suitable composition) was accompanied by sweet cinnamon cream and homemade eggnog ice cream. As I scraped my cup clean I pondered the beauty of souffles and made a new year's resolution to produce some of the sweet variety in my own kitchen when the first available opportunity presented itself.

So ended my first experience of special handling in a restaurant. The meal took about seven times longer than might usually have been the case, but the staff imdulged my weirdness with grace and aplomb. I went from feeling downright guilty and regretful to pleased and satisfied - pleased because the kitchen had clearly gone to a good deal of trouble to appease me and satisfied because I had been served a wonderful gluten-free meal that had neither the feeling of 'second best' nor 'making do.' The kitchen outdid itself to make my holiday dinner a memorable and enjoyable one, despite the inconvenience and trouble I had no doubt caused.

But then, as Sir pointed out, it wouldn't be Top Chef without the challenge.

Next up: requiring a holiday challenge of my own, I attempt to make spiced bread pudding from Schar's gluten-free panettone.

Madame Mao and the War on Wheat

I have at long last completed the unexpectedly problematic and time-consuming business of reorganising and redesigning my scribblings in a manner that befits my vision. Check it out - it's genius ... genius, I tell you!

With all the HTML hysteria and rebranding brouhaha safely behind me, I can now return to the serious business of recording in minute yet invigorating detail the progress of the war on wheat a chez Fractured Amy. Campers, what a busy time these last several weeks have been! They've seen several new cheeses go into the cave for percolation; the purchase of two exciting pieces of kitchen paraphernalia; the discovery of an untried variety of cake mix from the good folks at King Arthur Flour; a bumper butternut squash harvest; and the news that the ninth season of Top Chef debuts tonight (in Texas, of all places, which I assume means we will be treated to the titillating spectacle of Pads in a ten-gallon hat and alligator-skin roper boots). It is all too thrilling for words.

But first, news of Sir, who went jetting off to Shanghai without me a few weeks ago and has recently returned with tales to tell and cadeaux for all. Now, I confess that I was initially more than a bit miffed that Sir had forsaken me in this way. Shanghai has always held a particular allure in my imagination - I suspect too many movies are to blame for my romantic image of the Paris of the East. I always envisioned the city as being preserved in the aspic of the 1930's, with Marlene Dietrich or Ralph Fiennes lounging in the dark corners of smoke-filled rooms, wearing Chinese silk and white linen respectively whilst plotting international intrigues and looking suitably angst-ridden and mysterious.

So it was with great dismay that I waved good-bye to Sir with my tear-soaked handkerchief, disconsolate that laboratory duties and the Squid's pesky school schedule had colluded to prevent my first-ever journey to China.

In the end, it was reported to me that Shanghai possesses very little romance these days, or at least very little that is discernible to the average harried business traveller. When I first heard this regrettable news, I was prepared at once to forgive Sir for his desertion. When he further described the city's deficiencies, I was positively gleeful I had not made the trip.

It turns out that Shanghai is full of gluten!

Who knew? Not me, that's for sure, my knowledge of the Yangtze River Delta being woefully inadequate. I have since come to discover that the area's cuisine relies heavily on noodles, dumplings, and soy sauce (although loyal readers will recall that I have decided soy sauce is gluten-free).  Breakfast is a total nightmare, often featuring youtiao, which as far as I can gather is a double insult consisting of deep-fried dough wrapped in a pancake. A pancake! Of the French Concession, the less said the better: Sir confided sadly that croissants are everywhere prominently displayed in piles the size of Huangshan the Yellow Mountain. There is seafood, of course, which is usually safely cereal-less, although Sir feels the local delicacy of mitten crabs (in season in October and therefore practically obligatory at every meal) are overrated.

It is a great irony, then, that in the midst of all this grain-filled bounty Sir should have presented himself (for souvenir-scouting purposes) at a tourist shoppe known as Madame Mao's Dowry, hoping to find revolutionary accoutrements to offer as a sop to the disgruntled family when he got home. He hit pay dirt with a vintage poster from 1973, which my rather hazy knowledge of modern Chinese history tells me was at the end of the Cultural Revolution:

The accompanying blurb claims the heroical text goes something like 'Collect Grain to Prepare for War' - and although the identity of the enemy is unclear, I think I know what it is talking about. Those Gluten Guardsmen so cheerily depicted on their red battlefield had finally had enough of Shanghai's shengjian mantou and xiao long bao and declared themselves Ready For The Fight.

And as I embark on my second year of gluten freedom, I can say with some satisfaction that I know just how they felt.

Here Today and Gone Tamari

Campers, I have exciting new information on the tamari front!

Yesterday, relying heavily on my big yellow kanji dictionary, I was able to deduce that wheat was indeed absent from the bottle of organic tamari sent to me by one of Sir's concerned Tokyo colleagues. I played around with the condiment for some time, inventing a tasty marinade and creating some original art in the process. I was quite satisfied by my efforts and retired contentedly for the evening.

This morning in my Inbox I found a message from Said Colleague, who had helpfully translated most of the label for me during the night (or during the day - I find it is extremely difficult to get my head around a thirteen-hour time difference). It turns out the label is packed with informational goodies of which I was previously ignorant, including not just the ingredients (organic soybeans and table salt among them), but also the use-by date and the manufacturer-recommended holding strategy. With so many of the difficult characters accounted for, I was able to see for myself that the bottle contained 360 milliliters of salty soy spirit.

What joy! This knowledge will be invaluable during my next Mitsuwa pilgrimage, when I will be able to read labels with the confidence of an old hand.

I also have more news to share about soba, which was proving an etymological challenge yesterday. My dictionary is written in tiny lettering on very fine paper, but having retrieved my reading glasses from their super-secret hiding place (super-secret because I can never remember where it is), I was able to solve the mystery. The suffix ba is the grain character that is pronounced mugi in the Japanese words for wheat and barley. The prefix is so (pronounced kyou in other contexts) which means buckwheat. So the characters literally mean buckwheat grain. I find this revealing, because it means that the ancient Japanese (unlike The Nutritionist) understood that buckwheat is its own particular thing in and of itself, rather than a gluten-filled cereal to be described in relation to wheat or barley (small grain or great grain, respectively). Isn't that interesting?

Here is a funny fact that you can can use as an ice-breaker at gala holiday events in the coming months. Because soba is a homonym for the word meaning 'next to' or 'nearby', buckwheat noodles are the traditional Japanese house-warming gift for welcoming new neighbours. It's a pun - get it?  You can imagine, I'm sure, the impact my erudition has on lively party conversations.

Of course, this is all mere academic fluffery since soba are only about 80% gluten-free buckwheat flour, with the remaining binding provided by wheat flour. One hundred percent g/f varieties do exist, however, which I will be searching out at Mitsuwa, armed as I now am with all the labelling information I require.

I foresee a trip in November.

Tamari and Tamari Creeps in this Petty Pace

Well, Campers, you will remember that when we last visited the soy sauce issue, I had decided to take my life in my hands and affirm that naturally-brewed shoyu is virtually, if not actually, gluten-free. In the same breath I maintained that tamari, an often wheatless variety, was too salty and icky and to be used for most equivalent applications.

What I did not know at the time was that Sir, having broadcast my woes all over his Tokyo office, was inundated with advice from helpful colleagues (and their concerned wives, as it transpired) distressed to hear Bad News From Overseas about their national condiment. As a result, a fine bottle of organic tamari was entrusted to Sir for my delectation: the previous owner claimed it was liberated from his own stores, being surplus to requirements, but I suspect that some sort of elaborate Japanese reciprocal gift-giving ritual had come into play. Sir had, after all, the day before beneficently proffered to his colleagues several bags of exotically foreign Pepperidge Farm goldfish as an office snack.

Confronted by the tamari upon Sir's return Stateside, I was a bit stymied, to tell the truth. First, I double-checked the ingredients label for wheat, to make sure it was the real deal. I am now an expert at identifying gluten-related kanji, which isn't all that difficult since the characters are pretty much the same for just about every grainy word you care to think of. Such etymological economy makes life fairly easy for the gluten-free gaijin.



The entry for mugi in my trusty kanji dictionary:
observant readers will note that all grains use the same root character
and are distinguished by the prefix
(barley is 'great grain,' wheat is 'little grain', oats are 'raven grain,'
and buckwheat I can't figure out at all).



I scrutinized the tamari bottle's ingredients label, and detected nothing untowards:

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as they say, and I cracked the bottle open. I was immediately assaulted olfactorally by the pungent aroma generally found in Worcestershire or fish sauce. I tipped some out into my marinating dish in order to assess the sauce's other qualities. The tamari was much thicker and stickier than shoyu - positively syrup-like, I would venture to say: instead of dispersing in the dish as expected, it viscously stuck where it landed. I amused myself by practising my calligraphy, an impossibility with traditional soy sauce:

Tamari in hiragana - note the condiment's syrupy consistency,
eminently suitable for artistic endeavours

Tasting the tamari, I discovered it was indeed very rich and salty, though not so unpleasant as to be unusable. All it needed was a bit of diluting and doctoring to make it into a nice accompaniment for the butterflied pork I was preparing to grill. I cast my eyes around the kitchen, where they lit upon some dry vermouth (left over from my weekend stock-making project, about which more will be revealed in due course); some apple juice (it was either that or peach/cranberry, which might have been good, too), honey, and some peanut oil. I whisked it all together, tasting and adjusting as I went, and came up with a pretty excellent marinade, if I do say so myself. I soaked the pork in it before grilling, then boiled up and concentrated the remainder as a last-minute glaze. I'm pleased to say, the result was quite oishii.

I am therefore revising my position on tamari. It is certainly too strong to use straight up for sushi, sashimi, or in a salad dressing, and needs extensive manipulation for use as a marinade or sauce. Having said this, one can be 100% certain that it is gluten-free (provided it is the wheatless variety), and that is welcome news. I still maintain that good shoyu is safe and will continue to employ it where necessary.

But that's just the kind of girl I am - stubborn to the last.

Next up: I celebrate the onset of cold weather by cranking up the Wolf and taking stock of my situation.

There is No Joy in Soy-ville: The Saga Continues

The story so far: during a routine check of soy sauce bottles considerately labeled in American, I discovered that naturally-brewed varieties are made with wheat. A quick check of various online resources seemed to confirm this lamentable fact, although a few hints left here and there like so many breadcrumbs led me to believe that the shoyu situation was not a straightforward one. Let us now rejoin the narrative ...

The internet is full of people and organizations who tout the notion that soy sauce is death to us gluten-freedom fighters. The reasoning is simple: 'Wheat contains gluten, soy sauce is made from wheat, therefore soy sauce contains gluten.' It seems obvious, doesn't it? As a result, there is a whole industry based on the premise that soy sauce must be made without wheat to be gluten-free. As mentioned previously, tamari is almost always produced without wheat - the downside being that it tastes like salty fish guts and can only be truly appreciated by Buddhist monks and gourmands from Kyoto. A Google trawl revealed several soy sauces marketed as being gluten-free (either tamari in disguise or factory-produced swill containing corn syrup and caramel coloring) as well as something called 'liquid aminos', which has received rave internet reviews. I think 'liquid aminos' look just plain scary. They [it?] come[s] in a bottle that looks like the worst sort of insecticide imaginable and the FAQs on the company's website, while touting remarkable health benefits, are utterly silent about how the product is made. I am not yet that desperate.

In addition to these salty soy substitutes, the internet teems with recipes that people have devised to overcome the Wheat Problem. My favorite included beef broth, cider vinegar, and molasses amongst its many ingredients. Can you imagine bathing your best o-toro in something that vile? Neither can I. Next!

What disturbed me most about all this brouhaha and scare-mongering was the interchangeability of the terms 'wheat' and 'gluten' in almost all the commentary. Reminded of the finding that barley proteins are left behind in the distillation of whisky (thus rendering the Water of Life gluten-free), I looked for proof positive that the wheat gluten remained in soy sauce after its own lengthy production process. I could find no evidence that naturally-brewed soy sauce tested positive for gluten. In fact, I found whispers and intimations to the absolute contrary. Intrigued, I made another cup of Earl Grey and delved further.

Anecdotal evidence pointed to the possibility that wheat gluten (and soy proteins, for that matter) are broken down into their constituent amino acids by the enzymes present during lengthy fermentation. I could find frustratingly little scientific evidence to reinforce this claim, which is nonetheless bandied about by a small but dedicated group of gluten-free commandos. Their position is buttressed by two primary sources.

The first is a somewhat viral letter from a Kikkoman representative dated February 2005, which shows up in most discussions of this controversy. The author (apparently the general manager of the company's quality assurance department) explains that 'there is no officially approved or recommended method for [gluten] evaluation ... Any wheat gluten found in soy sauce is below the limits of detection as of the date this is written.' He also maintains that, should Kikkoman naturally-brewed soy sauce contain trace amounts of gluten, they are certainly below the limit of 200 micrograms per ml required to be considered gluten-free by the Codex Alimentarius.

Much internet energy has been expended dismissing this letter by individuals mistrustful of Kikkoman's motives and the Japanese government's laxity where food-labelling is concerned. Since these same theorists often recommend La Choy soy sauce as an alternative, I have my own suspicions.

The second source is a poorly-documented and described study by a Belgian outfit who purportedly sent two samples of naturally-brewed soy sauce for laboratory analysis and found that in both cases gluten levels were below 5 ppm (European legislation slated for 2012 will allow any product containing less than 20 ppm to be certified gluten-free).

Again, cries of 'Foul!' from those who seem to believe Europeans do not have the same stringent requirements that we do on this side of the Pond. This made me snort Earl Grey out of my nose, given that many European countries (northern ones, particularly) are light years ahead of us in the gluten-free arena (for example, I am reliably informed by the Rels that Marks and Spencer do an entire line of g/f prepared dishes and that the designation appears on many restaurant and pub menus these days).

So, who to believe? Without impartial, external laboratory evidence provided by independent parties, peer-reviewed and duly published, we may never know (I am starting a collection should anybody wish to donate to this worthy cause). In the mean time, I have chosen to side with science, and view naturally-fermented soy sauce as having such low levels of gluten as to make no matter. The liquid aminos and beef broth brews will just have to wait.

There is No Joy in Soy-ville

Readers are no doubt in a frenzy of anticipation waiting for my weekly discussion of Just Desserts. What can I say after Wednesday's episode? There really doesn't seem to be any point: it was far more Project Runway than Top Chef, with one of the only food-related comments I can recall coming from Pompadour about Eric's 'damn good' cheesecake. The rest was just silliness.

It would be far more profitable (and therapeutic) to discuss my latest crisis, which started on Tuesday when I was contemplating the leftovers from Saturday's gala dinner. What to do with quite tasty, although small and irregularly-shaped, grilled pork-loin bits? A stir-fry! I went to reach for my trusty bottle of naturally-fermented Japanese shoyu to begin preparations and was taken aback to find none in the pantry.

This in and of itself qualifies as An Event. I am never without several bottles of soy sauce, inscrutably labeled in Japanese calligraphy and wrapped in handcrafted rice paper, purchased on my bi-annual trips to Mitsuwa in Edgewater, NJ. Readers may think that my penchant for international food is limited to French pastry - but let me make it clear that if forced to choose my desert island cuisine or what I want for my last meal, I'll go Japanese every time. Mitsuwa, just south of the GW Bridge, is my temple. It's a life-changing Japanese supermarket that has to be seen to be believed: foodies who have not yet made the pilgrimage are urged to do so without delay. In addition to $70 musk melons and authentic wasabi rhizomes (more expensive than caviar) they offer a fine selection of good Californian sushi rice, beautiful fresh fish and beef for sukiyaki, every kind of natto and kamaboko you can imagine, and endless aisles devoted to sake and shochu.

What with one thing or another, my Fall trip has been postponed several times with the tragic outcome that my kitchen shelves are disturbingly low on rice and furikake. And shoyu.

The unfortunate result? I had to go to my local Wegman's and buy supermarket soy sauce to tide me over until my next trip east on Route 80. There I stood in the Asian food aisle. What imp of the perverse caused me to read the labels on all those bottles of Kikkoman and Wegman's own soy sauce? What was I looking for? Maybe it's just habit these days, because soy sauce couldn't possibly have gluten in it, could it?

Wise readers will already have guessed the truth.

I am the last person on the planet to discover that soy sauce is made from wheat.

Sigh. There it was, on every bottle's ingredients list - right after soy beans, right before salt. Every bottle! I felt like I'd been bludgeoned right upside the head by a large sashimi tuna. I ran to the gluten-free aisle, seeing in my mind's eye about 60% of my working-week dinner repertoire scattered to the four winds. After all, what's simpler and more go-to than a nice slice of lean protein, grilled, with some sort of soy-sauce based glaze or sauce? Once again, catastrophe. Nothing labelled gluten-free soy sauce anywhere in the whole freaking place.

I entertained the vain hope that only crass American soy sauce has wheat in it and put in an emergency phone call to Sir, who is still in Tokyo. He agreed to do some research and get back to me. Was there ever a more dispiriting subject line in an e-mail than 'Not Good'? Not in my universe. Sir's Japanese contacts had informed him (rather pityingly, I suspect) that all shoyu is made from wheat: they even taught him the kanji for wheat (komugi, which literally reads 'little barley', interestingly enough) so he could go and harass the shopgirls at the Isetan food hall on my behalf. No joy there either, although Sir reported with great satisfaction that the shop assistants were lithe and lovely and ever-so-helpful.

I did what I always do in these situations and ran to the internet. Several restorative cups of tea later, I had a few answers. Wheat, it turns out, is integral to the brewing of most true soy sauce, which is made by fermenting soy beans and crushed roasted wheat together with salt and water. Tamari, a very old variety, isn't generally made with wheat (it's a product of hacho miso production) but only gaijin use it like soy sauce, as in Japan its overly strong salty flavor is used almost exclusively in Kyoto's kaiseki cuisine. Of the factory-produced soy sauce one buys in five-gallon drums (produced from acid-hydrolized de-fatted soy flour; caramel coloring; and corn syrup) the less said the better.

How was it possible I had not previously heard the news? Well, as I said earlier, the labels on my soy sauce bottles are authentically kanji-fied and thus a mystery to anybody who hasn't attended 6th grade in a Japanese elementary school.  I was pretty sure The Nutritionist had not discussed soy sauce at our meeting, although since The Table went into the circular file after the whisky debacle I was unable to confirm. I went to the admirable cookbook the Diva sent me, which has a whole Asian chapter, to see what it had to say. In its discussion of Asian ingredients, I'm sorry to report it was less than authoritative: 'There are several brands of soy sauce that are certified gluten-free.' Well, that doesn't tell me anything! Just because something isn't certified doesn't mean it isn't gluten-free (viz. the whisky debacle). Plus, a minute's research into international food labelling regulations revealed that, in Japan, the gluten-free certification is virtually unknown. I thought I detected a whiff of double-talk and intentional ambiguity.

I subsequently launched myself headlong into a meta-analysis of internet soy-sauce resources that lasted well into the wee hours. I followed several tantalizing clues, went down many blind alleys, and finally came to a conclusion with which I can live (just as my Excel plot predicted). But that will have to wait for another day.

Next up: I expose a conspiracy perpetrated by fear-mongering American tamari manufacturers.