This is ridiculous. Just as I was beginning to feel somewhat recovered (apart from what I consider normal – if irritating – seasonal allergies), Jon’s back went out in a spectacular manner. He’s beginning to feel functional again, but I’ve been keeping busy trying to cook interesting and comforting things that can be eaten while propped up with pillows.

I made braised lemon-olive chicken with couscous, which made a wonderful soup the next day, and baked cookies (my grandmother’s sugar pecan cookies with white chocolate added in), and made an enormous quantity of minestrone, and baked hamburger buns from scratch, which made for some truly fabulous burgers. I also ordered a pizza one night, but I rather felt like I’d earned it.

The hamburger buns were a real highlight of the week – very simple to make, and very rewarding. Soft and sweet, they still held up to sturdy burgers with all the trimmings. I cut the original recipe down by half, but I still have a nice big bag of leftover buns for future burgers. Well worth the effort.

Hamburger Buns

Adapted from Mary’s Bread Basket and Soup Kettle by Mary Gubser

Makes 8-12 buns, depending on the size you like. The dough is very similar to challah, so I’m guessing it goes stale quickly – I put all my leftovers directly into the freezer.

• 1 packet (2 1/4 tsp) dry yeast
• 1 cup warm water
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup Canola or other vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 4-5 cups white bread flour

Combine the yeast and warm water until yeast is dissolved. Add the salt, sugar, oil and eggs and beat together. Add the flour gradually until the dough comes together, then knead ten minutes or so, added flour as needed, until the dough is soft and smooth. Put in an oiled bowl (covered) to rise for an hour or until doubled.

Punch down the dough and wait ten minutes, then divide it into portions. Splitting it 8 ways gives pretty standard-size buns, but you can easily make them smaller. Roll the dough pieces into balls, set them on oiled baking sheets, then press down lightly to flatten them out a bit. Cover them with a towel and let rise 30-45 minutes. Preheat the oven to 375.

When the rolls have risen, you can, if you wish, brush them with an egg wash and sprinkle seeds on top. I hate seeds on my rolls, so I never do this. Put the pans into the oven and let bake 10-15 minutes, until golden brown. Let cool before using for burgers.

Sorry for the radio silence this past week, but for the last eight days I’ve been out of commission with the nastiest cold/allergy/something-or-other I’ve ever had the displeasure of suffering through. Hack, cough. I’ve been eating, but for several days I completely lost my sense of taste – a distressing state of affairs.

Early in the week, Jon and I were signed up to help with a cooking class taught by our friend Peter. I felt that the customers might not appreciate my coughing into their food, so Jon went on his own, and he came back laden with fabulous leftovers. The class theme was Southern food, in particular New Orleans-style, featuring shrimp fritters, cornbread and chicken-sausage gumbo, and there was more than enough food for everyone. I lived off of that gumbo for the next several days, it being one of the few things that could penetrate my personal fog.

If you’ve managed to catch the crud yourself and need some hot soup full of pork fat, or if you’re just in the mood to celebrate Fat Tuesday with a little gumbo, here’s the recipe.

Fayetta’s Down Home Chicken Sausage Gumbo

recipe from Peter Belknap

• 1 large chicken, cut into pieces
• 6 Tbsp oil or lard
• 1 1/2 lb smoked sausage
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1 onion, minced
• 1 red pepper, minced
• 1 green pepper, minced
• 1 yellow pepper, minced
• 4-5 stalks celery, minced
• 2 Tbsp minced garlic
• 1/2 tsp thyme
• 3 bay leaves
• 2 allspice berries
• 2 tsp salt (or to taste)
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1/4 tsp cayenne (or to taste)
• 1/4 cup hot sauce
• 1/2 cup green onion tops
• 2-3 Tbsp chopped parsley
• file powder to taste
• 3 quarts chicken broth or more
• Optional additions: okra, oysters, prawns, carrot (I can personally recommend prawns, peeled and simmered in the hot gumbo until just done)

Fry the chicken parts until brown, remove from pan. Fry sausages until brown, remove from pan. Add oil to the drippings until it totals 1/2 cup of fat. Add flour and cook the roux until brown. Add vegetables and cook until soft. Add seasonings and hot sauce, then add broth. Return chicken and sausage to pot, cook gently one hour. Remove bones from the chicken and chop up the meat, putting it back in the pan. Add the green onions and parsley, simmer another minute or so and serve over rice. Pass file powder at the table.

Being sick all week, I haven’t really been motivated to cook. Or eat. I’ve been drinking a lot of hot weak tea.

Our Saturday night was pretty exciting. We took a container of frozen leftover soup out and heated it up, played Scrabble and went to bed early. Woo hoo! The soup was pretty good, though, a thoroughly unreproducable blend of chicken, leftover Indonesian braising liquid, chickpeas, rice noodles, lime leaf, galanga and god knows what. Plenty of sambal oelek to unplug the nasal passages. The rice noodles didn’t really benefit from the freeze/thaw action, but they were still tasty.

Hopefully more real food reporting to come in the near future.

This whole soft-food thing has been a great brain exercise for us. I’m feeling like I’ve eaten enough white carbs to do me for a while, so thinking of things that are soft and flavorful but NOT bread/pasta/rice is a real challenge. I managed a small bowl of chili at a restaurant last weekend and realized that beans are my friends – soft, nutritious and full of protein. We decided to make red lentil dal for dinner, one of the softest and most comforting foods out there. To round it out, we made one of our favorite Indian dishes, saag paneer (spinach with panir cheese). Panir is the tofu of India: bland on its own, but a great foil for and absorber of strong flavors.

I love saag paneer not just because it’s softly spicy and full of cheese – it’s also really easy to make, assuming you can buy panir at your local shop like we can. If you have to make it from scratch…well, in that case, you might want to make something else (unless you have better luck making cheese than I do). Same with the greens – you could certainly buy a bunch of fresh spinach, but this is a dish where I think it’s better by far to just pull a bag of chopped spinach out of the freezer.

Saag Paneer

adapted from Lord Krishna’s Cuisine by Yamuna Devi

• 2 green chiles (I usually use serranos, but you could use almost anything – I like a bit of heat)
• 1 piece fresh ginger, about 1/2 inch long
• 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1/4 tsp paprika
• 3 Tbsp oil or butter or a combination
• 1 pound bag frozen chopped spinach
• salt
• 1/2 tsp garam masala
• 1 package panir cheese, diced

Grate the chiles and ginger into a bowl with a microplane, then add the spices and a spoonful or two of water. Mix together.

In a large skillet with a well-fitting lid, heat the oil. Scrape the wet spice mix into the pan and saute for a minute. Add the entire bag of spinach and stir thoroughly to blend it with the masala. Cover the pan and turn down the heat to medium low, let it simmer for 5-10 minutes (make sure the spinach is hot through – ice chunks do not add to the experience). Add garam masala and salt to taste. A few minutes before serving, add the cheese and stir it all up. Leave it on the heat until the cheese is hot through.

Serve with dal and chutneys. The saag is also wonderful with chapati or poori.

In further pursuit of soft foods I can eat after my oral surgery last week, I’ve been going through cookbooks and looking for recipes that use white fish – I figure it’s one of the few animal proteins that doesn’t require much chewing. I’ve also been getting bored, so I thought a curry might be nice, as long as it didn’t have too many chunks in it. What I ended up with was the Padang fish curry, a sweet and slightly spicy coconut milk dish, from Cradle of Flavor. Thank goodness, it was actually like eating real food again!

Padang fish curry for two

adapted from Cradle of Flavor by James Oseland

flavoring paste:

• 2 oz shallots, coarsely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1/4 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 piece fresh ginger, thinly sliced
• 2 unsalted macadamia nuts

for the curry:

• 2 Tbsp canola oil
• 1 stalk lemongrass (ideally), tied into a knot
• 2 kaffir lime leaves
• 1 daun salam leaf (if you have it)
• 10 oz coconut milk
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• kosher salt
• two serrano chiles, tops cut off
• 2/3 lb white fish

I had hoped to make it with fish steaks – something like halibut – but the store had nothing but fillets. I got a piece of wild Alaskan flounder, which seemed like it would be tender and quick to cook. I was also unable to buy lemongrass (our grocery store usually has it, but not this time) – so I bought a lemon and used a couple strips of zest instead. We actually had daun salam on hand from our last big Indonesian goods shopping trip – it’s also called Indian bay. I don’t think you should substitute regular bay leaves, though.

Combine the ingredients for the flavoring paste in a food processor and puree, adding water if necessary. Heat the oil in a large saucepan or medium soup pot and add a bit of the paste. If the paste just sits there in the oil quietly, wait a bit longer. If it sizzles a lot, turn the heat down. When it just sizzles slightly, add the rest of the paste and saute until the shallots don’t smell raw any more.

Add the coconut milk, sugar and salt. Stir and bring to a simmer (do not boil). Let it simmer over low heat for 10-15 minutes. You can add the chiles now if you want more of their flavor, otherwise wait.

Add the fish to the sauce (and the chiles, if you haven’t already) and continue to cook at a gentle simmer until the fish is just done. Turn off the heat and let it all sit for a while – the original recipe wants you to wait 20 minutes, but I admit I didn’t feel like it. It smelled good!

While the curry was cooking, I cut up a sweet potato and put it in a saucepan with a little water to steam until soft, then mashed it up with a wooden spoon and served it alongside the curry. It worked beautifully with the coconut sauce! We opened a bottle of Greek wine called Malagousia – it’s a crisp but floral white that really went nicely with the cool herb and spice flavors of the curry. It was my first glass of wine all week (I’m finally off the painkillers, hurray) and tasted wonderful.

Ordinarily I’d think this was a nice lunch: homemade macaroni and cheese with cauliflower, and a bowl of Pacific brand roasted red pepper and tomato soup. I am so tired of it. I’m starting to be able to eat a bit easier, but nothing chewy or crispy any time soon – and I’m amazed at how bored I’m getting. I’m tired of ice cream (I know, shocking).

I have ideas for something more interesting for dinner tonight, but in the meantime – anyone out there have any good ideas for soft foods? I can chew on one side, but I’m supposed to avoid acidic or caustic foods, or anything too hot, cold or spicy. What are your favorite foods for après-dental work?

Things may be a little quiet around here for a couple days. I got a tooth pulled yesterday, and in between naps and trying to remember which pills I should be taking, I’m now casting around for ideas of things to eat with as little texture as possible, with the added fun of nothing hot, acidic or alcoholic.

As you might imagine, I’ve had a lot of yogurt. And cream of tomato soup. We had macaroni and cheese with steamed cauliflower last night, that went down pretty easy. So I’m not starving, but it all seems a little dull. And not very photogenic, either.

On the other hand, it was a perfect excuse for J to make me some ice cream! We dug out our copy of The Perfect Scoop, which hasn’t been seeing much use the last couple months, and I decided that plain old chocolate custard ice cream would do the trick. So J got hold of some good bittersweet chocolate and did it up, and oh my god it’s good. Like a fudgsicle, but a million times better. I can’t believe there’s a pint of it in my fridge right now and I’m not currently eating any. After the custard had chilled it was like a wonderful chocolate pudding, we almost didn’t want to put it in the ice cream maker – but it was even better afterwards.

You don’t need to wait until your next date with oral surgery to try this ice cream – go right out and make it now!

Bittersweet chocolate ice cream

from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 3 Tbsp cocoa powder
• 5 oz bittersweet chocolate
• 1 cup whole milk
• 3/4 cups sugar
• pinch of salt
• 5 egg yolks
• 1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste

Whisk together half the cream with the cocoa powder in a saucepan and bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for 30 seconds. Remove from the heat and stir in the chocolate, then stir in the rest of the cream. Scrape into a large bowl.

Combine the egg yolks in a medium bowl. In your saucepan, combine the milk, sugar and salt, and warm them up, then pour the mixture into the yolks while whisking. Pour everything back into the saucepan. Stir over medium heat until it thickens up -be sure to be scraping the bottom of the pan to avoid burning. Pour through a strainer into your reserved chocolate-cream mixture and stir it all up, then add the vanilla. Put in the fridge until cool, then freeze according to your ice cream maker’s directions.

Try not to eat it all at once – it’s bad for your teeth