Lynn wrote:

> PS: Suggestions for (no-teeth) side dishes esp. veggies?

After sending my previous reply in this thread, I got to thinking about
avocados. They're soft enough to eat without even being mashed, so they're
fair game for the dentally deprived. My first thought was that you could
make a kind of hors d'ouevre with a round of boiled potato topped with a
piece of avocado. The potato could be seasoned with Old Bay, curry, or some
similar spice mixture, or it could be just left alone, or maybe drizzled
with a touch of top-quality olive oil.

Then I started thinking about avocado mousse. Specifically, I wondered if
there *was* such a thing. Googling found both sweet and savory versions, but
the sweet ones seemed kind of unappealing to me. A recipe for crab cakes
with avocado mousse seemed like a pretty good concept, but maybe not soft
enough.

But what about chawanmushi? Chawanmushi is the Japanese version of a quiche.
Where quiches are formed by baking a mixture of eggs and dairy (milk and/or
cream, and usually cheese as well), chawanmushi uses a mixture of eggs and
broth. Chawanmushi are steamed rather than baked, and are softer and more
delicate than quiches.

So maybe a chawanmushi with dashi and salmon, topped with avocado mousse?
The topping could optionally be hit with a flame, to give the topping a kind
of meringue quality.

I also wanted to get cream cheese and avocado together somehow, so I started
considering the idea of a savory avocado cheesecake. Turned out that recipes
exist online for that, too, and it's more than possible that at least one of
them would be suitable for a no-teeth appetizer (or party dish).

Bob, advocating avocado