Heat by Bill Buford

It's bliss at boiling point

As career moves go, only Arthur Rimbaud's decision to become an arms dealer in Africa is comparable. After 24 years as a top-flight editor, first with Granta then The New Yorker, Bill Buford started working in the kitchen of Babbo, a fashionable Italian restaurant in Manhattan. This unlikely shift came about when he decided to write a profile of the restaurant's chef/patron Mario Batali, a Rabelaisian figure renowned for both his TV appearances and his appetites (he has been known to drink his way through half a case of wine over dinner).

Batali agreed to take on Buford as a "kitchen slave". His research rapidly revealed the yawning gulf between the enthusiastic amateur cook and a professional kitchen. Buford's description of his culinary activities at home ("chaotic, late, messy") will chime with many who get the urge to perform on the range. In the cramped, steamy kitchen of Babbo, he was expected to operate efficiently from the onset. In his first half-hour, he managed to slice himself while boning duck: "The top of my finger erupted in a gush of blood."

This is the first in a series of self-inflicted wounds. Frying ribs, Buford splashes himself with hot fat. Then he splashes himself again. "Blisters on blisters... I became airborne."

Not all wounds were visible. Buford gives graphic accounts of tongue-lashings from Batali and others. But something strange happened during his six months as a slave. He fell in love with the kitchen. After writing the piece, he packed in his desk job and returned to Babbo, where he was promoted to the post of line cook, in charge of the grill. The great set-piece of this section is a night of lethal, incessant denigration from his superior.

Why he stuck it out remains a mystery. All Buford admits is: "I can't think of many other activities in a modern urban life that give as much simple pleasure." He also relished the banter and comradeship of the kitchen. His descriptions are atmospheric, though it is sometimes hard to tell characters apart.

There is much else in this funny, wonderfully readable book: an awed portrait of Batali's former boss Marco Pierre White; a saliva-inducing account of pasta-making; and an extended stint with the Maestro, a Dante-quoting butcher in Tuscany. "I hope to return every year," writes the besotted Buford.

A culinary equivalent of Redmond O'Hanlon's jungle adventures, this book is not only full of drama and entertainment, but also painlessly imparts a wealth of knowledge. There are many fine books on food, but Buford's insane culinary enthusiasm has resulted in a work that is by some distance the best about life among the professionals.

Christopher Hirst was recently named Glenfiddich food writer of the year