Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany

Heat is Bill Buford's participatory account of his experience as a full-time chef at Mario Batali’s New York City restaurant Babbo. The narrative somewhat awkwardly skips back and forth between Buford’s restaurant job and Batali’s personal history, but Buford shows what life is really like in the kitchen. He also takes interesting detours into the history and provenance of various culinary ingredients.