Heat

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. <br>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. <br>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, <br>of preparing game in London, and making handmade pasta at an Italian hillside trattoria. <br>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. <p>"From the Hardcover edition."