Heat

Bill Buford's Heat is the story of one man's descent into madness. Buford meets Mario Batali, the celebrity chef, and proceeds to insinuate himself in the kitchen of one of Mario's restaurants, Babbo. Buford's goal is to soak up culinary knowledge for his own benefit, to be a better cook at home. Buford begins in the prep kitchen, where food is initially prepared (dicing carrots, trimming fat and bone from cuts of meat, preparing herbs) so the service in the evening just has to cook. From there, he moves around the kitchen, working the grill, the pasta station, and plating food.

After a year in the kitchen, Buford wants more. Despite his proficiency (he's already quit his job as an editor, and is working full time as a line cook), he takes some time off from the restaurant to spend time in Italy with the family who taught Mario how to make pasta. The family is only too happy to take on a friend of Mario's, and Buford makes several trips, becoming quite close to the family, who live in a backwater Italian town. He is even shown a tortellini recipe on the condition that he keeps it from Mario.

This still isn't enough for Buford, and he returns to Italy (with his long-suffering wife, who he has convinced to quit her job as well) to work with a Tuscan butcher, who Mario's father had worked with. The butcher is a larger than life individual, much like Mario -- at Buford's first encounter with him, everyone in the shop is drinking, and the butcher is declaiming the Divine Comedy. At the butcher shop, Buford is instructed by the butcher's mentor, and learns that not all countries have the same cuts of meat -- he's relating to Mario the various cuts he's learned on the leg, and Mario stops him, laughing, with the revelation that he's never heard of these cuts. The student has, while not quite surpassed the master, become something different.

The book ends with Buford and Mario enjoying a night on the town, and Mario offering to help Buford start a restaurant. Buford demurs, saying now that he's master Italian cooking, he needs to follow the example of Catherine di Medici, and master French.