steak sandwich, chickpea bread

The meat is not so much sliced as shaved.

The amount of diced hot green chile is determined by the tin.

The thing about the bread is I want it to be heavier than usual and more flavorful. As if it has a few tablespoons of hummus added into the dough, so those elements are included as I do by turning dry beans into powder and cooking with spices in 2X the mass of water. I also want increased complexity that rye has so rye is included as well.

nuts and chocolate

Cashews and pecans with couverture chocolate discs, chile flakes and salt heated in pulses in the microwave until the chocolate is melted then chilled for nut and chocolate bark. 

Chile and chocolate go together very well, like two previously unknown exotic ingredients from an unexplored and remote continent. Hey! That's us. They're talking about us again. 

sliced beef tenderloin, cole slaw, baked French fry-style potatoes

The layered flavors are simple as can be. Do you realize how much technique goes into producing something so simple, how much restraint goes into something pulled off with easy breezy insouciance? 

The potato is sliced all the way through, the two halves barely holding together at one end, then rotated and sliced through again right through the center lengthwise. The idea is cook the potato in the microwave and have it dehydrate as much as possible in there.

Then finish slicing through after the potato is cooked, and sliced further into planks and then board shapes by lengthwise cuts through the segments. Oiled, seasoned, baked.

Hamburger, mozzarella, red bean bun

You must design your own herb garden or else buy one prearranged, and where's the fun in that? I have two vaguely vertical elements, chives, that do not grow so thickly. Basil grows very well, so does tarragon. Those two are bushy and are already trimmed twice. The sage is trimmed once. The chives have more seeds added to their little sponge cups to help them fill out and to stagger them. The two slow cups are mint and parsley. Once they get going those two things really take off. This is the early stages. The lamp is still in the lowest position.

The buns are made heavy with cooked bean polenta, well seasoned and good by itself. It would make a good dip. I only want a few tablespoons.

salmon with shrimp scampi and aerogarden herbs on iceberg

I like slabs of iceberg lettuce. 

After all that I forgot the broccoli. 

The broccoli is steamed in butter and white wine that comes in a box. 

It is a lot of butter and a lot of wine just to steam broccoli. The excess is drained into the pot that cooked the angel hair spaghetti to become the shrimp scampi sauce. The shrimp is cut into small pieces. Aerogarden trimmings, basil and sage because those two needed trimming. Plus lime, so that is a dressing right there. It drips down onto the iceberg lettuce and dresses that too. The iceberg stays sturdy and gives a very nice crunch. 

What you have here is a landscape inspired by the monolith outcroppings at Larkspur. Stratifications with patches of vegetation, the broccoli an important layer, but I forgot about that and there goes my whole landscape.