"Heat"

[fiefoe]

The book has a very long subtitle that's hard to finish in one breath -- charming but symptomatic of its disjointedness. The chronicle of Bill Buford's personal quest in professional kitchens turns out to be all over the place.

• The lardo was from a pig that, in the last months of its.. life, had lived on apples, walnuts, and cream. ("The best song sung in the key of pigs").
• "a wise-guy joint where you can get anything at any time of night, and none of it good"
• "Wretched excess is just barely enough."
• Marco Pierre White: "He has fucking big calves doesn't he?.. They'll make a great osso buco."
• the shoulder-rubbing edginess in a kitchen
• If Memo accidentally knocked you, the blow came from the torso, .. because he always led with the groin.
• Ah, the romance of Italy, the still life said to anyone peering through the windows, even though the wine had gone brown from the heat, the olive oil was rancid, and the real kitchen.. was out of view.
• (A return:) The cooks assaulted the meat, indignantly tearing off pieces with their hands, and turned to one another, saying, "Chewy?"
• The rabbit would... be served with spring peas, pea shoots, and a .. vinaigrette made form baby carrots. "We're giving you not only the rabbit but what's inside his head," Mario explained.
• "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."
• Your meat is now arranged like so many dead toy soldiers, neatly tidied up.
• Learning to cook meat was learning to be at ease with variation and improvisation.. I was coming to recognize that there are two kinds of cooks: meat cooks and pastry cooks.
• Frankie was the oldest young person I've known... Maybe he was every bit his age but from a different era: a younger version of someone's grandfather.