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    Heat: An Amateur's Adventures As Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, And Apprentice To A Dante-Quoting Butcher In Tuscany
    Unavailable
    Heat: An Amateur's Adventures As Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, And Apprentice To A Dante-Quoting Butcher In Tuscany
    Unavailable
    Heat: An Amateur's Adventures As Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, And Apprentice To A Dante-Quoting Butcher In Tuscany
    Audiobook12 hours

    Heat: An Amateur's Adventures As Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, And Apprentice To A Dante-Quoting Butcher In Tuscany

    Written by Bill Buford

    Narrated by Michael Kramer

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    From one of our most interesting literary figures – former editor of Granta, former fiction editor at The New Yorker, acclaimed author of Among the Thugs – a sharp, funny, exuberant, close-up account of his headlong plunge into the life of a professional cook.

    Expanding on his James Beard Award-winning New Yorker article, Bill Buford gives us a richly evocative chronicle of his experience as "slave" to Mario Batali in the kitchen of Batali's three-star New York restaurant, Babbo.

    In a fast-paced, candid narrative, Buford describes three frenetic years of trials and errors, disappointments and triumphs, as he worked his way up the Babbo ladder from "kitchen bitch" to line cook . . . his relationship with the larger-than-life Batali, whose story he learns as their friendship grows through (and sometimes despite) kitchen encounters and after-work all-nighters . . . and his immersion in the arts of butchery in Northern Italy, of preparing game in London, and making handmade pasta at an Italian hillside trattoria.

    Heat is a marvelous hybrid: a memoir of Buford's kitchen adventure, the story of Batali's amazing rise to culinary (and extra-culinary) fame, a dazzling behind-the-scenes look at a famous restaurant, and an illuminating exploration of why food matters. It is a book to delight in, and to savour.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJun 6, 2006
    ISBN9781415935262
    Unavailable
    Heat: An Amateur's Adventures As Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, And Apprentice To A Dante-Quoting Butcher In Tuscany

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    Reviews for Heat

    4/5

    732 ratings46 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I didn't enjoy this book. Compared to other similar food and cooking memoirs, this one has fewer personalities and more food. The problem is that for me, the food does not sound appealing at all. Buford talks about eating serving after serving of lard, he complains when a restaurant entree comes with vegetables on the side, he talks about how employees who leave the restaurant all lose forty pounds, …  The food sounds worse and less healthy than McDonalds. Yuck. The book still gives a window into a certain culture, but not a very attractive one.
    • 3/5
      I learned a lot, and the stuff about working with Mario Batali at the beginning was very interesting, but the bulk of the book is about being kindof an apprentice butcher and pastamaker in Italy, so it's a little slower-moving. Since very little of the book is actually about working for Mario, I felt kinda bait-and-switched -- if I'd read the book expecting it to be a memoir about butchery, I might have liked it better than I actually did. Just not quite as advertised.
    • 4/5
      What is the source of Italian cooking? The author, Bill Buford, sets out to find it by working in the Babbo kitchen. And then, he travels and works in kitchens all over Italy chasing this elusive question. Did it come from France? Maybe, as it turns out. What a story he tells of his experiences along the way.
    • 5/5
      This book was fascinating.
    • 2/5
      Read this via audio-book. The mispronunciations and over-enunciations of the reader drove me a bit nuts, which isn't Buford's fault. But Buford is to blame for how bland and uninformative this book is. Every second felt like an hour, and in the end, I just couldn't slog through any more of it.
    • 5/5
      Best of it's kind books about upscale kitchens - the author really gets into the guts of the kitchen experience much more than writers like Anthony Bourdain or other food critics. It's not a breezy read, but the detail and personal interpretation of the experience is fantastic. At times laugh out loud funny, other times a historical lesson on the evolution of how egg found its way into pasta. a fun read!
    • 4/5
      Loads of food history in this treasure trove! Great read if you are at all interested in Italian food or learning about the culinary trades.
    • 4/5
      This was a fun book to read. It started out as a biography of Mario Batali by a middle-aged journalist who wormed his way into Mario's kitchen as an intern. But it quickly grew into an exploration of why people chose to cook professionally and why people devote their lives to producing quality food when mass-production has so much more monetary benefits. The author leaves Mario's kitchen to go to Italy to learn about pasta from the masters, then works for a butcher in Italy learning the ins and outs of properly raising and butchering pigs and cattle. Eventually he tries to wrap it all up with a summation of Mario's life, but at that point the book has moved so far away from Mario's story that it hardly seems worth the effort to try to reign it back in. I would've rather had the author cut the Mario stories at the beginning and make it entirely about his personal journey, but I suppose sometimes it's about mass-marketing celebrities to get to the point where you can deliver your quality product.
    • 4/5
      An insightful outsider's view of the culinary world. I enjoyed this, though I couldn't help gaping at the sheer impossibility of those sorts of experiences for someone like me, lacking the financial means that this author obviously had. Besides the envy it aroused, though, I enjoyed this book.
    • 4/5
      pretty cool book..
    • 4/5
      Mit Ende 40 seinen vorteilhaften Job hinschmeißen und als Küchenhelfer anheuern? So bescheuert kann man doch gar nicht sein. Doch, Bill Buford war es. Er kündigte seinen Redakteursjob beim New Yorker und fing im Sterne-Restaurant Babbo in New York an, ganz unten. Bereitete Möhren, Zwiebeln, Pilze zu, zerlegte Enten, grillte Unmengen Fleisch und Fisch bis er glaubte, hier genügend gelernt zu haben. Doch es war nicht genug: Nach einem Jahr ging er nach Italien und arbeitete in einer Trattoria, um sich die Kunst des Pastamachens anzueignen und danach in der berühmtesten Metzgerei Italiens eine neue Ausbildung zu absolvieren.
      Obwohl Buford bereits zuvor ein begeisterter Hobbykoch war, ist es eine völlig neue Welt die er da betritt. Er (und zugleich die Leserinnen und Leser) lernt das Chaos und die Hektik kennen, die in einer Feinschmeckerküche herrschen, aber auch, dass dennoch mit Liebe und Hingabe gekocht wird. Er trifft exzentrische Weinbauern, Metzger und Köche und berichtet nicht bloß über diese Begegnungen, sondern ebenso über seine Gedanken, die diese 'neuen' Menschen und Tätigkeiten in ihm auslösen. Was all diese Personen verbindet, ist nicht bloß dass sie sich alle in irgendeiner Art und Weise mit Lebensmitteln beschäftigen, sondern dass sie es mit Liebe und Respekt tun und voller Interesse sind für das, womit sie arbeiten. Auch Buford wird davon infiziert und er zeigt die Widersprüche auf, die insbesondere in den westlichen Industriegesellschaften vorherrschen: Fast alle essen Fleisch - aber keiner will wissen, was geschehen muss, damit es wie gewünscht auf unseren Tellern liegt. Von Liebe und Respekt keine Spur. Angeekelt wendet sich beispielsweise der Investmentbanker ab, als Buford ein ganzes, frisch getötetes Schwein mit einer Blutlache in einer Plastikverpackung in seine Wohnung schleppt - vermutlich würde es vielen von uns ähnlich gehen.
      So unterhält das Buch glänzend, informiert über vieles was man noch nicht wusste, regt zum Nachdenken über unser Essen an - und löst unbändigen Appetit aus.
      Wiglaf Droste als Vorleser ist voller Enthusiasmus bei der Sache, es macht Laune ihm zuzuhören. Nur manchmal empfand ich seine Version des Dario etwas überzogen - sooo exaltiert wird dieser Mensch wohl doch nicht sein, oder?
    • 4/5
      Essentially, the story of a journalist of no mean reputation (former editor of Granta and fiction editor of The New Yorker), who in frustration at his ineptness at cooking for dinner parties, decides to apprentice himself to Mario Batali, learning the ropes in his renowned New York restaurant, Babbo.The title says it all. His culinary education takes him from nasty accidents in the kitchen to learning first-hand the arts of pasta making and butchering in Italy. Much of it focuses on the career of Mario Batali, which is an interesting story in itself, but I much preferred the recounting of Buford’s real life adventures, which are awe-inspiring. Talk about throwing yourself in at the deep end, he literally immerses himself in the world of a professional kitchen (often at the cost of bodily injury) and carries the reader along with him, hoping he won’t kill himself before he feels he’s learnt enough.There are some amazing insights into the crazy world of celebrity chefs which are fascinating in themselves. But the whole book is written in such an engaging way and with such brilliant depiction of characters, you feel really disappointed to reach the end and have to break acquaintance with all of them.
    • 4/5
      Unabridged audio. DH and I listened to this in the car and at one point were laughing so hard we had to pull over. Nicely done memoir about Buford's stint working at Babbo in New York and how his life changes and he becomes obsessed with food and cooking- so much so that he goes to Italy to learn from the masters- interwoven with a biography of Mario Batali, famous New York chef. Profane and hilarious.
    • 3/5
      The author, a New Yorker writer and amateur cook, strikes up a friendship with Mario Batali of the restaurant Babbo and the TV show Molto Mario. He persuades Mario to let him work in Babbo's kitchen, and later ends up spending time in Italy, first learning to make pasta, and then to apprentice to a Tuscan butcher. The number of cuts and burns he suffers is quite startling! The book was a bit too long. I did persevere to the end, partly because of amusing tales such as the author's experiences in getting a 275-lb. pig carcass into his New York apartment (first he and his wife had to load it onto the motorscooter -- and that's only the beginning!) I learned that I don't want to work in a restaurant kitchen, and that I am not quite sure I ever want to eat in a restaurant again (after reading about the prevailing attitude on coming to work ill -- "just do it" -- you may not either), and that is really what books like this do for me. I don't have to do all those things, I can just read about them.
    • 5/5
      Part travel memoir, part cookbook, part behind the scenes at restaurant, part Mario Batali biography, all wonderful. I ripped through this book and enjoyed every moment of it. Backstage at Mario's restaurant learning how to be a line cook, to Italy to learn to make pasta, to Italy to learn to butcher meat...just fantastic. A foodie's wet dream. Good food takes time, but reading this book won't.
    • 3/5
      It’s almost exactly a year ago since I read Buford’s “Among the thugs”, a chilling account of Brittish football violence. Buford ran with the most violent hooligans, and managed to write something that was both firmly rooted on ground level and put into a context and masculinity. And he had a sharp eye on himself in the process, observing what was happening to him, how he was somehow pulled in.“Heat” works in a very similar fashion. Having the idea to become a great cook, he manages to find his way into the kitchens of top chef Mario Batali as an unpaid intern. We get to follow the steaming, exhausting everyday of the restaurant kitchen, and we get to follow Buford into a deeper and deeper obsession with cooking and food. Soon he’s spending months in Italy watching old ladies roll pasta dough or stirring meat stews for ten hours straight. It’s often amusing and interesting, and full of nice little anecdotes – even if trying to keep all those people referred to on first name basis apart is more or less impossible. What I’m missing here is that context. It’s like this journey into the complicated simplicity of Italian food is enough – except it isn’t really. The book feels all over the place and never really leaves that ground level, and in the end it becomes downright messy, almost random. It does inspire to muscular, slow cooking though, and I’ve cooked at least one musty meat two-hour casserole as a direct result of reading it.
    • 4/5
      Summary: Bill Buford managed to turn a journalistic assignment on superstar chef Mario Batali into a chance to work in the kitchen of Mario's NYC restaurant Babbo. He'd always been an enthusiastic cook, but he soon discovered that working in a restaurant kitchen is not at all the same thing. But as soon as he gets his bearing as a prep cook, and eventually as a line cook, he starts getting hungry for more: more food, more techniques, more authenticity, more history. He then travels to Italy, following more-or-less in Mario's footsteps, to learn how real pasta is made, and to learn from the last in a long line of small town butchers about Italian meat.Review: Kitchen Confidential introduced me to an entire sub-genre that I didn't know I'd been missing: the restaurant/chef memoir. And, fairly or unfairly, it is the standard to which I compare all other entrants in the genre. Fortunately, Heat stands up to the comparison fairly well.There are some things that I think Heat didn't do as well as Kitchen Confidential. As a portrait of a celebrity chef, it's certainly interesting, but less immediately compelling, presumably because it's written about Mario rather than by him. (Also possibly because I like Bourdain - as a personality - more than I do Batali.) There are some things that Heat does about as well as Kitchen Confidential. As a behind-the-scenes look at the restaurant world, it's certainly not as thorough as KC, but it does have the benefit of being seen through the eyes of someone who is not a restaurant professional, thus making it easier for the reader to imagine themselves in the middle of that world. And the individual anecdotes are just as good, but I could seriously sit and listen to tales of chef-ly hijinks and bad behavior and food preparation all damn day. There are also some things that Heat does better than Kitchen Confidential, mostly when it varies from formula and away from the restaurant. Buford's got a passion for food, clearly, but also for food history, and I found that his digressions on the subject - his obsession about when pasta dough first started being made with eggs, for example - were totally fascinating. I dare anyone to read the later sections of this book and not immediately want to jet off to Italy and beg someone to take you in and teach you about real food. Buford's writing is drily witty at the same time as being cheerfully enthusiastic, and while the book is structured roughly linearly around Buford's various apprenticeships, there are frequent diversions and tangents - not only the pasta history one mentioned earlier, but also pieces of Mario's backstory, visits to England, a polemic about the proper cooking of polenta, etc. The bad news is that this meant that if I got distracted, I could often wind up a little lost, and that I had a hard time keeping all of the other kitchen staff straight, since they would disappear from the narrative for chapters at a time. The good news is that when I did get lost, it didn't really matter, since there wasn't really a plot to keep track of, and a new topic would be coming along soon anyways. Michael Kramer did a fine job with the narration, although hearing first-person memoirs read by anyone other than the author always takes a little getting used to.Overall, while I didn't enjoy it quite as much as Kitchen Confidential, that's a high bar to clear, and it was definitely a solidly enjoyable listen. 4 out of 5 stars.Recommendation: Recommended for foodies, those who like behind-the-scenes-style memoirs, and those who are both and looking for something else to read after finishing Kitchen Confidential.
    • 4/5
      Buford begins his story with quite a commotion but unfortunately seems to forget that intensity throughout most of the novel. I found the first half to be rather slow and boring, lacking in any real detail about himself or anything of interest. However, the novel picked up towards that last half, when his passion for cooking materialized and took over his senses. It is for this section that I gave the book that extra half star because it was refreshing to read about a true and all consuming love
    • 5/5
      This book made me want to cook everything, all the time.
    • 4/5
      Bill Buford takes the reader on a journey through life in the kitchen with culinary perfection. We experience Mario Batali's rise to celebrity chef status; butcher beef alongside Marco Pierre White; and sweat nonstop with Buford himself as takes off the tie and join the ranks of line cooks in Batali's own Babbo. Buford's insight into the minds and kitchens of renowned chefs is funny, honest, and mouth-watering. This is an amazing page-turner deliciously written.
    • 5/5
      Bill Buford brought me into the "heat" of the kitchen with this wonderful book! He takes the reader on a journey through life in the kitchen with culinary perfection. We experience Mario Batali's rise to celebrity chef status; butcher beef alongside Marco Pierre White; and sweat nonstop with Buford himself as takes off the tie and join the ranks of line cooks in Batali's own Babbo. Buford's insight into the minds and kitchens of renowned chefs is funny, honest, and mouth-watering. This is an amazing page-turner deliciously written for those of us who don't know their bucatini from their vermicelli.
    • 4/5
      The New Yorker better than any publication has found writers who can find essentials by illuminating people who do something exceptionally well. John McPhee is the greatest of these, and in Heat, New Yorker writer Bill Buford takes on the world of fine dining and high end restaurants by pursuing the myriad paths of celeb-chef Mario Batali. For all the entertaining glimpses we get of Mario, this book is about the essence of the relationship between people and food--in this case, Italian food and culture. Greatly entertaining and a fascinating first-person character.
    • 4/5
      Buford's tale of his journey from line cook to hog butcher is sentimental in parts, self-indulgent in others, as well as a doe-eyed peaen to celebrity chef and all-around large person Mario Batali, but it's the former New Yorker editor's engaging writing style that keeps the "action" of the book flowing. Similar Tony Bourdain's own chronicling of the ins and outs of professional restaurateuring, Buford's flubs at Batali's flagship eatery will give you a greater appreciation of what really goes on in the kitchen and what it takes to be a professional food handler, in and out of the dining room
    • 4/5
      Bill Buford loves to cook. He has a crazy idea: Why not offer to work for free in a restaurant kitchen and learn how professionals cook. Buford puts his plan into action and before he knows it, he is working in the kitchen of one of New York's best restaurants. Okay, he's chopping carrots, but he's surrounded by magnificent cooks, and, gradually, he moves up in the kitchen hierarchy. Buford is a wonderful writer and the kitchens where he works provides zany characters and situations that make for a great read.
    • 4/5
      An insightful outsider's view of the culinary world. I enjoyed this, though I couldn't help gaping at the sheer impossibility of those sorts of experiences for someone like me, lacking the financial means that this author obviously had. Besides the envy it aroused, though, I enjoyed this book.
    • 5/5
      This is the book that Julie & Julie should have been. It begins as a journey to learn about Mario Balati, becomes a journey to learn about "real" Italian food, and ultimately transforms into a journey where the author learns about himself. Throughout the trip the audience learns, loves, and most of all, laughs with the author as he experiences the trials and tribulations of learning to handle himself in a professional kitchen.Buford tells a tale that the any foodie who has ever wondered if he had the chops - pun fully intended - to make it in a restaurant can relate to. This was a delightful journey and I loved the glimpse into a world I've only seen from the front of the house.
    • 3/5
      This was kinda fun to read because he talks about his experience working in the kitchen. There were a few parts that I was like "Woah that is SO true!". I didn't love it, but it was good and I'd recommend it to anyone who has worked in a kitchen.
    • 5/5
      Bill Buford became fascinated by Mario Batalli and talked him into letting Buford work in his restaurant kitchen as an unpaid intern. Along the way we get insights into how a restaurant kitchen works, although those have been given in greater detail and with greater flair in such books as Kitchen Confidential and The Soul of a Chef. For me the fascinating part of this book came when Buford became hooked on food from his own point of view, doing endless research into when Italian cooks first began adding an egg to pasta dough and going to Italy to learn from a butcher who follows the old ways. In some areas he winds up surpassing Batalli's own knowledge of Italian cuisine. Along the way we see Batalli's career from owning a restaurant to becoming a celebrity chef.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book. In addition to giving the reader a "fly on the wall" glimpse of life behind the swinging doors into a restaurant kitchen, the chapters on Buford's training in Italy is worth the price of the book.
    • 3/5
      The author takes us along as he leaves his job to learn the ways of the professional cook in New York restaurant. It's an fascinating visit into a world that I sure don't want to work in. He also spends time in Italy learning to be a Tuscan butcher. Beware -- the one thing that really stuck with me was why not to order pasta at the end of the evening ...