Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany

Bill Buford

ISBN 10: 0449015963 / ISBN 13: 9780449015964

Published by Fawcett Crest, 1969

About this Item

Readable copy. Pages may have considerable notes/highlighting. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less.

Seller Inventory # G0449015963I5N00

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
• Publisher: Fawcett Crest
• Publication Date: 1969
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0449015963
• ISBN 13: 9780449015964
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Fair
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
• Weight: 0.61 pounds

About this title

Synopsis

A sharp, funny, informative and deliciously captivating book about writer, Bill Buford's year-in-training as a cook at Mario Batali's famous New York restaurant, Babbo, his apprenticeship to a Tuscan butcher, and his quest to make the perfect pasta.
 
Highly acclaimed writer and editor, Bill Buford, left his job at The New Yorker for a most unlikely destination: the kitchen at Babbo, the revolutionary Italian restaurant created and ruled by superstar chef Mario Batali. Finally realizing a long-held desire to learn first-hand the experience of restaurant cooking, Buford soon finds himself drowning in improperly cubed carrots and scalding pasta water on his quest to learn the tricks of the trade, becoming--in his words--Batali's “kitchen bitch.”
 
Bill started out of curiosity, of wanting to know how professional chefs cooked and in what ways that differed from what home cooks do. But he quickly became obsessed, and ended up spending a year “locked inside a hot, windowless room,” living “a weirdo life” while going through “kitchen boot camp” -- “a long, arduous, confidence-bashing, profoundly humiliating experience.”
 
His love of Italian food then propelled him on journeys further afield: to Italy, to discover the secrets of pasta-making and, finally, how to properly slaughter a pig. Throughout, Buford stunningly details the complex aspects of Italian cooking and its long history, creating an engrossing narrative stuffed with insight and humor.

About the Author

BILL BUFORD is a Staff Writer and European Correspondent for The New Yorker, before which he was the Fiction Editor of the magazine for eight years. Before that he edited Granta magazine for sixteen years and, in 1989, became the publisher of Granta Books. He has edited three anthologies: The Best of Granta Travel, The Best of Granta Reportage, and The Granta Book of the Family, and is also the author of Among the Thugs. Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Buford grew up in California and was educated at the University of California at Berkeley and at Kings College, Cambridge. He lives in New York City with his wife, Jessica Green.