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I loved this book of the author’s passion for food. Bill Buford met over-the-top, intense, and famed Chef Mario Batali when he had the audacity to invite him to an intimate birthday dinner for a mutual friend. Chef Batali had an excessive passion for food and drink stimulating and feeding the appetites and thirsts of those who crossed his path or entered his restaurants. Mario had a tumultuous past, and his time spent in Italy made him realized that he loved real Italian food. Bill as an editor for 23 years, Editor of The New Yorker, and a literary guy, took the assignment to write about Mario and then to get into his kitchen. Bill was swept into Mario’s orbit, developed a competence to run a station, and then discovered the simple pleasures and happiness of making food.

“The difference between the home cook and the professional,� [Mario] said. “You’ll learn the reality of the restaurant kitchen. As a home cook, you can prepare anything any way any time. It doesn’t matter if your lamb is rare for your friends on Saturday and not so rare when they come back next year. Here people want exactly what they had last time. Consistency under pressure. And that’s the reality: a lot of pressure.� He thought for a moment. “You also develop an expanded kitchen awareness. You’ll discover how to use your senses. You’ll find you no longer rely on what your watch says. You’ll hear when something is cooked. You’ll smell degrees of doneness.� The kitchen was “a roomful of adrenaline addicts.� “Cooks work when others play.�

To really learn to cook and to find his style, he needed to be a slave to many chefs. He met Chef Marco Pierre White, who was known for his innovations, perfection for detail, love of food, and photographic memory. However, Bill realized that he lacked both Marco’s genius and Mario’s visual kitchen awareness because he was a word guy. In cooking, you are not reading or thinking, but are observing and imitating. The images and tasks being formed are more typical of a child than an adult.

I was fascinated to read how a restaurant kitchen works from the size, the chef and staff, the stations, the equipment, and the hierarchy. He learned the value of space, don’t leave it or you lose it, and to make money you do not throw food away. He created a visual and sensory place - the sweltering temperature of the kitchen, the heat of the ovens, the flaming pans and grills, the adrenaline rush, the sweat of the kitchen staff, team work madness, the chaos, and lack of space. He learned that cooking became rote as you learned the methods and you knew the measurements and readiness by feel. Working in unison under constant stress and long hours, the kitchen staff developed a camaraderie. To really learn, you needed to be in the kitchen. He learned to trust his senses. “Learning to cook meat was learning to be at ease with variation and improvisation, because meat was the tissue of a living creature, and each piece was different.� Heat changed the molecular structure of meat. He recommended to add pasta from its water as it becomes part of the sauce. He warned not to eat at a restaurant and order the last meal, because the kitchen staff are tired, hungry, and will loathe you.

Each chef had his own technique even in the same kitchen. He was advised, “Never challenge the person in charge, especially when he’s wrong, or he’ll make your life hell. He’ll pile on more orders than you can handle. He’ll find fault with everything. He’ll make you redo dishes that were cooked perfectly the first time.�

He traveled meeting people who had an impact on Mario from England’s notorious Check Marco Pierre White to the hills of Porretta Terme between Bologna and Florence.

Bill Buford was determined to learn the basics of Italian cooking, the hundreds of pastas, the innies and outies, and their clinging sauces. He explained that in making ragù, you take a piece of meat and “[cook] the shit out of the fucker.� Essentially, a meat with either a broth or wine are cooked over low heat until neither a solid nor liquid remain. I love Bolognese sauce and was intrigued to learn that it is as personal to the cook as the many varieties. I adored how one Italian described the dish as “profound and complex and touched something deep in his soul.� Another spoke of cooking the sauce provided a state of arousal until eaten.

My taste buds were salivating over his description of eating two pastas. “One was tortellini, small complicated knots of dough with a mysterious meaty stuffing. The other was a giant pillowy ravioli, distinguished by their thin, floppy lightness. I’d never had anything like them. They were dressed with butter and honey and filled with pumpkin, so that when you bit into one you experienced an unexpected taste explosion. The pumpkin, roasted and mixed with parmigiano cheese, was a mouthful of autumn: the equivalent of waking up and finding the leaves on the trees outside your window had changed color. The dish was called tortelli di zucca ...�

He rapturized over Italy’s first known cookbook, Liber de Coquina. I was amused to learn that the original 1465 edition included some cannabis recipes.

In Italy, each region has its own unique language describing the parts of a cow. To learn, you have to immerse yourself in the culture. Ultimately, his passion brought him to become an apprentice to master butcher Dario Cecchini in Panzano, Tuscany. Dario was not just a butcher, but an artist, who quoted Dante, sang, and sold to those he chose, and made what he wanted.

Well researched and packed with information that I took my time reading to absorb. This was not a quick but an intense read. There was so much information to grasp. Well written, it exudes his love and passion on learning how to cook. It was not easy. He was under intense pressure to be meticulous, precise, fast and repetitive where he could never be sick and never let the burns, cuts, or other injuries stop him. This talented writer described himself as a “journalist-tourist� infatuated with the kitchen mystique.

While I enjoy cooking, I would never be a professional chef. The hours and work are dreadful and the pressure insane. No sick days. No time off. I admire those hardworking professionals who are dedicate their lives to this work and who are paid so little. Made me hungry for good Italian food.