BiblioAddict

HEAT: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
by Bill Buford
Vintage / June 2007
$14.95; 336 ppgs.

Alright, so I know I haven’t posted in a few days, but let me assure you that my lack of posting has not been in vain because I have finished not one but two books. On the interminably long flight from Washington, D.C. to San Diego (which was actually two flights with a layover in Chicago) I finished THE BEAUTIFUL CIGAR GIRL by Daniel Stashtower. Then, on the terrifyingly rocky flight back home I finished Bill Buford’s HEAT. I also finished MASTER OF DRAGONS by Angela Knight, but I won’t bore you with my talk of romantic shape-shifting dragons, battles between good and evil, steamy love affairs, handsome fairies, and powerful warriors from King Arthur’s Round Table. No, I’m sure you don’t want to hear about any of that. If you do, I direct you to Angela Knight’s “Master” series. I like my romances to come with an original twist and, in the world of paranormal romance, it doesn’t get any more original than Angela Knight.

That said, what book should I discuss first – the book I started first, or the book I finished first? To be fair, I think I should start with Buford’s HEAT, which I absolutely loved. HEAT, I have decided, is essentially culinary travel writing. Buford was previously a full-time writer for the New Yorker and a part-time amateur cook. By “part-time,” I mean that he threw lavish dinners for his friends that were more note-worthy for Buford’s enthusiasm than they were for his skill.

One day for a birthday party he was throwing for a friend, Buford innocently (and some would say rather insanely) invited the famous New York chef Mario Batali a.k.a. “Molto Mario” to dinner. His wife Jessica, he says, was apoplectic with wonder: “What in the world were thinking of, inviting a famous chef to our apartment for dinner?” Which is exactly what I would have asked. Surprisingly, the dinner goes well – mostly because Mario takes over and does the cooking – and at the end of it Mario tells Buford, “You learn by working in the kitchen. Not by reading a book or watching a television program or going to cooking school. That’s how it’s done.”

And that’s how Buford does it. He quits his desk job and embarks on a several years long journey to becoming more than just a home cook. He starts his journey as a kitchen slave in Babbo’s, Mario’s restaurant, (cutting vegetables, etc.); he then moves up to working as a line cook (“The grill station is hell,” the section begins); soon he’s working at the pasta station, which is, surprisingly the hardest station in the restaurant. When Buford asks to work there, Mario responds, “You can’t… You’re in your late forties. You’re too old. You have to be in your twenties. It’s a too fast – you no longer have the mind for it.”

Buford wonders the same thing I did: “The issue was boiling food in hot water. How difficult could it be?” Of course, as it turns out – very. The consuming heat, the endless sauce variations, the popularity (everyone wants pasta at an Italian restaurant) makes the station very intense. But Buford manages well enough and becomes so enamored with the idea of pasta that he travels all the way to Italy to learn how to do it by hand: “If you’re a boy, your principal difficulty in making totellini, I discovered…is your fingers, which, alas, really need to be a girl’s, and not just any girl’s, but an elfin girl’s.”

After that, Buford returns to Italy again (Tuscany, to be specific) to learn how to butcher a pig (and eventually a cow). The butcher to whom Buford becomes an apprentice is such an outsized character that, if I didn’t trust Buford’s journalistic veracity I’d accuse him of making it up. Is there really a man who eats raw meat and regularly quotes Dante’s INFERNO, even drunkenly performing it while cutting meat for his equally drunk customers? You betcha, apparently.

Needless to say, I liked this book and I don’t even enjoy cooking. But then you’ve already heard me discuss how much more I like reading about it than I do doing it. I’ve also already said that several times I had no idea what Buford was talking about. This is mostly because I just don’t know much of the jargon used to describe cooking. And when Buford traveled to Italy, I really didn’t know what he was talking about. What does it mean if you “brine” something? And what, pray tell, is soppressata? Don’t answer that.

Despite all that, I still immensely enjoyed myself. Buford has an excellent way with words – a way that just makes your mouth water just reading them (even if you don’t know exactly what he’s talking about). And he is also incredibly funny and self-deprecating. I suppose the kitchen mishaps that Buford experiences happens to everyone at some point or another, but I just didn’t think it was possible for a man to hurt himself so many times. I’m surprised he still had enough operable fingers to write this book.

Thank goodness he did though, because this was a pleasure to read. It’s even inspired me to go into the kitchen a shuffle things around for once. The book ends with Buford’s declaration that he intends to go to France to continue his culinary study. Just thinking about the French sequel to HEAT is enough to make my bookish appetite grumble. Yum.