Q: Jamie I want to make your Vegetarian Pad Thai from Quick & Kosher Meals in Minutes cookbook, but I can’t find kosher rice noodles. What do you suggest?

Amy, Skokie IL

A: Now that everyone knows my secrets — how to make anchovy paste and fish sauce and the pareve substitutions for sweetened condensed milk, this is my most frequently asked question. If you’re not familiar with rice noodles, I’ll tell you that they are made from rice flour and water. Guess where they come from. (C’mon, you can do this.) Yes, of course, Southeast Asia. They are terrific in Asian recipes and they are a satisfying substitute for wheat-based noodles for people who are sensitive to wheat or gluten. If you have tried rice noodles before, you’re probably as obsessed with them as I am.

When I was developing the Pad Thai recipe, Willi Food used to import and distribute these thin-as-glass dream noodles with a reliable kosher certification. To my dismay (Can you believe they didn’t call me?), the product is no longer on the shelves in the US. Rumor has it that the absence is only temporary and the noodles are on the way back. I have been nagging my store manager about this so regularly that when he sees me coming he calls, “no, not yet Jamie.”

In the meantime, I asked the OU and Star-K kosher certification agencies if rice noodles need a hechsher in the first place. It turns out that while “it’s always better” to have every food supervised (remember that there are hechshers given to everything from water, to vodka, to kitchen rugs – for Pesach – really!), plain rice noodles (even with tapioca or corn starch added to improve appearance and texture) have no kashrus concerns and can be used even with no certification.

Ya learn something new every day!