Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta

A staff writer for The New Yorker and author of Among the Thugs offers an exuberant, witty account of his entry into the world of a professional cook-in-training, documenting his experiences in the kitchen of Mario Batali's acclaimed restaurant Babbo, his apprenticeships with Batali's former teachers, his relationship with Batali, and his immersion in the world of food.

Zusatztext Buford develops a superbly detailed picture of life in a top restaurant kitchen. . . Heat is a sumptuous meal. The New York Times Delightful. . . . Charming. . . . [Buford's] style is . . . happily obsessed with a weird subculture! woozily in love with both cooking and the foul-mouthed! refined-palette world of the chef. The Washington Post Book World Exuberant! hilarious! glorying in its rich and arcane subject matter! Heat is Plimptonesque immersion journalism. . . . With Heat ! we have a writer lighting on the subject of a lifetime. The Los Angeles Times Book Review Informationen zum Autor Bill Buford is a Staff Writer and European Correspondent for The New Yorker . He was the Fiction Editor of the magazine for eight years, from April 1995 to December 2002. 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 . Bill is also the author of Among the Thugs (Norton, 1992), a highly personal nonfiction account of crowd violence and British soccer hooliganism. For The New Yorker, he has written about sweatshops, the singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, and chef Mario Batali. Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1954, Bill Buford grew up in California and was educated at the University of California at Berkeley and at Kings College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a Marshall Scholarship for his work on Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. He lives in New York City with his wife, Jessica Green, and their two sons. Klappentext Expanding on his August 2002 "New Yorker" article, Buford now offers a richly evocative chronicle of his experience as "slave" to Mario Batali in the small, chaotic, highest-standards kitchen of Batalis three-star New York restaurant, Babbo, and of his apprenticeships with Batalis former teachers. Linguine with Clams If you're tempted to make linguine with clams according to the kitchen's preparation, you should understand that the only ingredient that's measured is the pasta. (A serving is four ounces.) Everything else is what you pick up with your fingertips, and it's either a small pinch or a large pinch or something in between: not helpful, but that, alas, is the way quantities are determined in a restaurant. The downside of measuring by hand is what happens to the hands. At the end of an evening your fingertips are irretrievably stained with some very heady aromatics, and there's nothing you can do to eliminate them. You wash your hands. You soak them. You shower, you scrub them again. The next day, they still stink of onion, garlic, and pork fat, and, convinced that everyone around you is picking up the smell, you ram them into your pockets, maniacally rubbing your fingers against each other like an obsessive-compulsive Lady Macbeth. Ingredients small pinch of chopped garlic small pinch of chili flakes medium pinch of chopped onion medium pinch of pancetta olive oil butter white wine 4 oz. linguine per serving A big handful of clams parsley NOTE: the ingredients and preparations in this recipe are approximateexperiment with proportions to make it to your taste. Begin by roasting small pinches of garlic and chili flakes and medium pinches of the onion and pancetta in a hot pan with olive oil. Hot oil accelerates the cooking process,and the moment everything gets soft you pour it away (holding back the contents with your tongs) and add a slap of butter and a splash of white wine, which stops the cooking. This is Stage Oneand you are left with the familiar messy buttery mushbut already you've added two things you'd never see in Italy: butter (seafood with butter...

Autorentext

Bill Buford is a Staff Writer and European Correspondent for The New Yorker. He was the Fiction Editor of the magazine for eight years, from April 1995 to December 2002. 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. Bill is also the author of Among the Thugs (Norton, 1992), a highly personal nonfiction account of crowd violence and British soccer hooliganism. For The New Yorker, he has written about sweatshops, the singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, and chef Mario Batali. Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1954, Bill Buford grew up in California and was educated at the University of California at Berkeley and at Kings College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a Marshall Scholarship for his work on Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. He lives in New York City with his wife, Jessica Green, and their two sons.

Klappentext

Expanding on his August 2002 "New Yorker" article, Buford now offers a richly evocative chronicle of his experience as "slave" to Mario Batali in the small, chaotic, highest-standards kitchen of Batalis three-star New York restaurant, Babbo, and of his apprenticeships with Batalis former teachers.

Zusammenfassung

The book that helped define a genre: Heat is a beloved culinary classic, an adventure in the kitchen and into Italian cuisine, by Bill Buford, author of Dirt. 

Bill Buford was a highly acclaimed writer and editor at the New Yorker when he decided to leave for a most unlikely destination: the kitchen at Babbo, one of New York City’s most popular and revolutionary Italian restaurants.

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. His love of Italian food then propels him 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 and visceral narrative stuffed with insight and humor. The result is a hilarious, self-deprecating, and fantasically entertaining journey into the heart of the Italian kitchen.

Leseprobe
Linguine with Clams

If you're tempted to make linguine with clams according to the kitchen's preparation, you should understand that the only ingredient that's measured is the pasta. (A serving is four ounces.) Everything else is what you pick up with your fingertips, and it's either a small pinch or a large pinch or something in between: not helpful, but that, alas, is the way quantities are determined in a restaurant.

The downside of measuring by hand is what happens to the hands. At the end of an evening your fingertips are irretrievably stained with some very heady aromatics, and there's nothing you can do to eliminate them. You wash your hands. You soak them. You shower, you scrub them again. The next day, they still stink of onion, garlic, and pork fat, and, convinced that everyone around you is picking up the smell, you ram them into your pockets, maniacally rubbing your fingers against each other like an obsessive-compulsive Lady Macbeth.

Ingredients

small pinch of chopped garlic
small pinch of chili flakes
medium pinch of chopped onion
medium pinch of pancetta
olive oil
butter
white wine
4 oz. linguine per serving
A big handful of clams
parsley

NOTE: the ingredients and preparations in this recipe are approximate—experiment with proportions to m…