RECENT READ: Bill Buford’s Heat

I finally finished Bill Buford’s Heat, An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. It was like a food vacation, where every day you eat something new and amazing.

Buford starts by working in the prep kitchen at Mario Batali’s Babbo, then line cook and pasta-maker, learning a lot about food and restaurant kitchen culture/politics. His interest in Mario’s Italian education takes him to Italy, to make pasta, then to apprentice at a Tuscan butchery. Buford is driven by a love of food (and has the blessing of a very patient wife) and that has made Heat a book after my own heart.

I’m sure the amazingness of this book is popular knowledge, but I hadn’t gotten around to reading it. I kept seeing it at Borders and wanting to read it, so into my Goodreads list it went, where it stayed until I needed some new books and requested it from another branch of my library. I started it right away and it has re-ignited a passion for food in me (it’s been a bit on hiatus, being too hot to turn on the oven), like a pilot light that had gone out, but is now roaring away. Sunday night I played with flavors, to create a saute with sweet potato, portabella mushroom, mirepoix and an Italian flavored ground turkey over couscous (that post is soon, promise), which followed a Sunday morning omlette made with bread—wholly because I had been reading so much about food, I couldn’t help it.

I went to my friend Becky’s house this past Saturday and it being a household where an Italian mama cooks (and it’s always good) and Becky being both a reader and a foodie, I brought up that I was reading this most amazing book. “I bought that for my mom!” Becky said. “Did you love it?” I asked, turning to Mama. “Yes! It’s so full of stuff! Did you get to this part? Or that part?” It was funny, that, because of course Becky would buy her Italian mom this book. Not that only Italian moms will like it (I am clearly neither Italian [but Puerto Rican] or a mother [but happily childless]), but I realized that it had appeal across many people.

Not only is this book full of food stories, but it’s full of stories. Buford is a writer first, so to get such an amazing insider look at a kitchen and to Italian food (mostly Tuscan) from someone with such a delightful penchant for adding in the historical facts and the personal journey—well, it’s a rare treat.  When Buford ends this novel, he does so with a bit of a cliffhanger—and I hope that it means there might be another food-related book in his future.