We went down to the basement to borrow a few flowers from their large cooler area, then headed into the pastry kitchen slash fermentation and dehydration laboratory with our goodies. Hibiscus is out of season, so Price had nabbed red and pink peonies from a private corporate event at the restaurant the previous week. (Il Fiorista's resident florist, Mindy Cardozo, describes flowers as "little corpses" to highlight that they're already dead and in various stages of decomposing when we put them in vases and vodka.)

First he soaked the flowers in water to remove any unwanted brown matter, then carefully plucked the petals from the stem, spread them in a single layer on a dehydrator tray and popped them in the Excalibur-brand machine to dehydrate for six hours at 95 degrees. Why 95? "That's a temperature I've found to be very consistent to maintain the color of what we're doing," he explained.

I'd learn later that no one really knows the "right" temperature to dehydrate anything, and that even the instruction manual for my at-home machine said that "the only way to become proficient is to dry, dry and dry some more!" Also, while it's entirely possible to dehydrate in the oven rather than in a fancy single-use machine, most ovens don't go below 100 degrees. Even if they did, I'm not sure I'd recommend leaving your oven on for 16 hours or so to make salmon jerky while you, say, sleep, walk your dog and go to the office.

As we waited for the water content of the flowers to lower, Price pointed out jars and buckets full of dehydrated and fermenting ingredients that he planned to use in the future: preserved lemons, concord grape and champagne vinegar, marigold petals in Everclear, dried calendula petals and lily flowers. All this while his busy team prepared for dinner service. "How many pounds of tuna do you want to get?" one person asked as another two attempted to make bread in a tiny oven after the restaurant's $22,000 professional version broke down. Ah, the day in the life of a chef.

"The only way to become proficient is to dry, dry and dry some more!"

Meanwhile I taste-tested Il Fiorista's dried forget-me-nots -- used in shortbread cookies and wildflower fritters -- against local spice shop Kalustyan's. The buds' purple leaves reminded me of Prince on the cover of Purple Rain, but alas, neither variety tasted as honeyed as his voice. Think planty and chewy.

Fortunately, the dried saffron flower that Price handed me made up for my misstep. It's highly unusual to see the whole flower, since we typically only have access to threads of saffron (the flower's stigmas). I hadn't realized that each flower has only three threads, which explains the spice's high price. The whole shebang on its own tasted slightly sweet and delicate, with a hint of addictive bitterness.

Price pulled a glass jar off a high shelf and urged me to put my nose in it. The dried basil smelled as fresh as summer. Using the basil, he showed me how to turn dried flowers into a powder, like I'd be doing with the hibiscus for the harissa: Put the leaves or petals into a Vitamix with flat blades, then let it whir till you have a fine powder. Do not, as we did, stick your head directly next to it when you remove the lid, as the pungent dust will puff into your nose and lungs, causing a reaction worse than GloZell's to the cinnamon challenge.