And then the fun began. The dehydrator arrived, and we made thin, crispy wafers of whatever we found in the larder: dill pickles, turnips, beets, kimchi. We created a palette of seasonings — not only Mr. Dufresne's red pepper powder, but green pepper powder and red onion powder (a pretty lavender color) that we found turned scrambled eggs into a respectable lunch or dinner. We made a lemon and a lime powder from pulverized, dehydrated zest that gave a refined citrus perfume to everything it touched: tomato soup, vanilla ice cream, iced tea. And we concocted a new-wave snack of seasoned puffed rice by dehydrating and then frying in olive oil overcooked arborio rice (a technique Mr. Andrés had described), and sprinkling the crispy rice with red pepper and onion powders.

We called up Mr. Achatz, who offered a couple of more dehydrator ideas: chips made from thinly sliced cured meats and a mango and mandarin orange fruit leather he makes in the dehydrator's liquid tray. Fruit leather got us thinking: why not vegetable leather? We puréed roasted peppers and poured them directly into the liquid tray, and in a couple of hours, we had turned out grown-up roll-ups to add to our crudités plate. The chorizo chips we made gave shape to the paella course. First, we imagined a paella napoleon, using the chips as "pastry," but that seemed a little pedestrian and too meaty, so we imagined the shrimp and saffron being a savory ice cream, the rice as puffed rice sprinkles adhering to the ice cream. Paella ice-cream sandwich!