Book Recommendation: Heat
Bill Buford was the fiction editor for the New Yorker. He left his job to become, essentially, an intern at Babbo— Mario Batali’s flagship restaurant in New York City. The result is an incredibly fun and satisfying inside look at the real Mario Batali. In the book, Buford even goes on to intern in Italy as a pasta maker, and for a “Dante-quoting butcher in Tuscany”.
Here’s a passage from Bill Buford’s “Heat”:
Once Mario left the kitchen, you never knew when he was coming back. Elisa recalled the trepidation that had surrounded his departures in the early days, especially during a Chinatown phase, when he’d return with purchases he felt should be served as specials. Duck feet, say, or duck tongues. “Very, very small, with a tiny bone in the back which was almost impossible to get out.” Or jellyfish, which, in the tradition of preparing local ingredients in a Italian way, were cut up into strips, marinated with olive oil, lemon, and basil, and served raw as a salad. “It was disgusting,” Elisa said. It was equally unnerving when Mario returned with nothing, because then, with no distractions, he started rooting around in the trash. The first time I witnessed the moment— a peculiar sight, this large man, bent over and up to his elbows in a black plastic sack of discarded foodstuffs— I was the unwitting object of his investigation. I had been cutting celery into a fine dice and was tossing away the leafy floret heads (after all, how do you cube the leaves?). The florets have the most concentrated flavor, and I knew it couldn’t be right throwing them away, but that’s what I was doing: I had a lot of celery to dice.
“What the hell is this?” Mario asked, when he appeared, holding up a handful of my celery leaves, before plunging back into the plastic bag to see what else there was to discover— which was, of course, more celery florets, hundreds of them. He pulled them out, shaking off whatever greasy thing was adhering to their leaves (they’d be served that night with steak). “What have you done?” he asked me in astonishment. “You’re throwing away the best part of the celery! Writer guy— busted! Remember our rule: we make money by buying food, fixing it up, and getting other people to pay for it. We do not make money by buying food and throwing it away.” I witnessed the garbage routine several more times, involving kidneys (“Elsa, we don’t throw away lamb kidneys”), the green stems of fresh garlic (“Frankie, what are you doing? These are perfect in a soup”), and the rough dirty tops from wild leeks (“Somebody talk to the vegetable guy— he’s killing me”). Anything vaguely edible was thrown out only if it was confirmed that Mario wasn’t in.
Available for purchase here
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