Heat, by Bill Buford

Heat (Franklin, TK23.2 .T86 B83 2006), Bill Buford’s second wonderful book of insider reportage, describes Buford’s mid-life decision to start taking food very seriously. He begins as a “kitchen slave” at Babbo, a three-star Italian restaurant in New York, and works his way up. Generously, he passes along insider information designed to make me feel knowledgeable: the process of dishing out food, for example, is known as “plating.” Later he becomes apprentice to a butcher in Italy. Buford’s mentors are demanding and eccentric: every kitchen has a “screamer.” The English restaurateur Harvey White, for example, orders customers who request well-done meat to leave his restaurant. When one of his chefs breaks a leg, White is furious, saying: “How dare you?” If you were a … horse, I’d shoot you!”

Bill Buford doesn’t get mad, though, because he has so much respect for the obsessive pride and care everyone takes with their work. He’s desolate after criticism and ecstatic when praised. My reaction is to wonder that anyone ever agrees to work in the uncomfortable conditions necessary for even the least well paid employee of a high-end restaurant—let alone, do it for free, as Buford did. I’m particularly astounded that Buford, previously fiction editor for The New Yorker and founder of Granta magazine, would make such a leap outside his personal box. As a reader, however, I’m very glad that he has.

Heat has a happy ending: Babbo gets to keep its three stars--the reviewer hints that he might even have bestowed a fourth star had the restaurant’s music been better--and Buford becomes such a good cook that Babbo’s owners suggest he might want to open his own restaurant. Buford realizes, though, that he still has much to learn and makes plans to study cookery in France.

Buford’s first book was the wonderful Among the Thugs, published in 1991. The thugs in that book are English soccer hooligans, with whom Buford becomes fascinated after accidentally watching a mob of them destroy a train. His first two books were published fifteen years apart, which means we can expect a third in 2021. His Wikipedia entry suggests he’s now writing about French food, but we may just have to wait to know for sure.

Review: Stiff by Mary Roach

In Stiff, author/journalist Mary Roach investigates and observes some of the many scientific and not-so-scientific ways that donated corpses are put to use. These observations include everything from medical school autopsies and crash impact studies to crucifixion experiments and studies of medicinal cannibalism. One section of the book discusses the relatively new practice of “green” burial that some folks are now pursuing; having your body turned into compost and buried under a sapling.

This book is not an in depth description of how autopsy and other cadaver testing is actually performed. Rather, it is the description of these tests by a person who does not have a medical background. Some of Roach’s other books focus on such topics as sexual science, the evidence for an afterlife and sciences search for extraterrestrial life in space. Clearly, she is fascinated by the mechanics of things that most people would rather not know much about.

Though this book is somewhat a general overview of what it means to have your body donated to science, it is also the author’s personal exploration of possible things to do with her own corpse when the time comes. I enjoy her final thoughts on this subject.