The ground bakes at temperatures above 100 degrees in the hottest days of summer, while just to the west are walls of high ice in the Cascade Mountains.
Out in that desert moonscape, temperatures reach 120 degrees, the ground bakes to a skin-searing 180 degrees and no one survives long without shade and water.
It favours irrigated land and is absent from regions where the ground is baked so dry that it cannot probe for insects.
My carbonnade was ruddy, soothing and fork-tender, while Bruno loved his gratinée au Maroilles, a casserole of sliced potatoes and ground pork baked with slices of cheese.
But the notion of a Greek pastitsio, a layered casserole of macaroni, tomatoes and ground beef baked with a béchamel topping (using lobster in place of the meat), took hold, and there was no turning back.
You might start with a clutch of appetizers, straying beyond the tried-and-true samosas and pakoras to things like fish tikka — fragrant cubes of salmon marinated in yogurt and done up with a cinnamon-rich mixture of spices — or the lamb seekh, skewers of potently spiced ground lamb baked in the restaurant's tandoor oven.
Ground beef, baked beans, and Spaghetti-Os mixed together.
Traditional Egyptian mac and cheese, known as "macaroni béchamel," calls for ground meat baked between two layers of macaroni and covered in béchamel sauce (a mixture of butter, flour, and milk) and cheese.
Baked ground ripped open as if riven by an earthquake.
The air was hot and still, the ground dry and baked.
