Bill Buford: 'Heat'

Have you ever wondered if you were meant to be a chef? Test yourself: Imagine the toothpaste consistency of raw lard from a pig’s back hand-cured with herbs and salt; pasta with oysters and caviar; frogs legs fried in bread crumbs and served with fennel pollen - if these dishes sound delicious, you too may be destined for the three-star kitchens of 'Heat', where art and artistry collide.

'Heat' follows New York Times editor Bill Buford as he spends two years apprenticing himself to master chef Mario Batali (TV star of Food Network cooking shows such as Iron Chef, and owner of several high class New York restaurants) and retracing Batali’s gastronomic education across England and Italy. In this memoir-biography, Buford emulates his role model. He starts as a kitchen slave doing the morning prep work at Batali’s Italian restaurant Babbo, then moves on to line cook and pasta-maker, and finishes with an apprenticeship to a butcher in Tuscany.

Along the way, he experiences the excesses possible in food, where a good meal can last 45 dishes and “I’m full” isn’t a good excuse to stop eating. He cuts, burns, and blisters himself repeatedly, and suffers ritual humiliation of being screamed at by temperamental cooks. He also renders a pig carcass into edible dishes in his apartment, and he traces the history of pasta from its earliest water-flour-salt recipes to discover when an egg was added and became the noodle we know today.

At times scholarly, at times so deliciously descriptive it makes the most unlikely food combinations sound tasty, and at times just a diary of one man’s journey from casual cook to obsessed professional, 'Heat' is a tasty treat for aspiring chefs and foodies alike.

Published on 5th July 2007 by Vintage Books.

Written by W. L. Clark.