I’ve never met Mario Batali, like certain other lucky people, but I did make it to the end of Heat. Not a swaggering page-turner like Kitchen Confidential, this is a book that shows The New Yorker provenance of its author; it is, by turns, instructive, thoughtful and smart.
Granted, there are a few faux-shocking bits thrown in for good measure: Batali drinks an entire case of wine in one sitting? He flirts shamelessly with anything in a skirt? Yawn. I couldn’t care less about Mario’s personality tics; clearly, he’s a big, bawdy boy in orange rubber slippers, so let’s get on with it.
I was fascinated by the descriptions of the inner workings of the kitchen, the near-scientific breakdown of certain recipes (polenta, anyone?), and the bits of historical flotsam and jetsam Buford worked into the story that tethered the glittering present to the culinary past.
Several weeks after I turned the last page, here are the things that are still rattling about in my head:
1. It’s All About the Pasta Water. Although my pasta water could never be as scrumptious as the murky, starchy vat of goodness that sits on the stove at Babbo, Buford convinced me that reserving a bit of pasta water to toss in to my sauce at the end is a good idea. I’ve tried it several times since, and guess what? It’s true! My carbonara didn’t need more butter and cream to make the noodles slip and slide the way they should – it needed a splash of pasta water! The pasta water, Buford writes, “…flavors the pasta with the flavor of itself.” I’m a believer.
2. Tom Valenti is the Reason for the Short Ribs. According to Buford, Valenti brought the short rib into vogue in 1990, when he placed it on his menu. Short ribs were forty-five cents a pound 16 years ago; the same amount now costs north of five dollars. I thought about this recently when I sat down to one of my favorite dishes at Jeanty at Jack’s, the Kobe Beef Short Ribs, which are tender, unctuous morsels of sheer delight. While Philippe Jeanty may not agree that his short ribs have anything to do with a restaurateur in New York, I sent a silent thank-you out to whomever made this dish popular enough to make it to my mouth ~ not once, but numerous times ~ over the last few years.
3. There are No Shortcuts to Mastery. I knew this already, and so did you, but I forget sometimes. I make a dish twice, or three times, and get discouraged when it falls short of outstanding. I forget that if made the same dish fifty times, or a hundred, it would be better by far. In this day of 30-minute meals and crazy hectic schedules, the idea of repeating something over and over to achieve perfection is a laughably impractical notion. I daydream of being able to escape to a remote mountain village in Italy – or, better yet, a tiny village in France – to stand beside a real master for a few months and truly master one beautiful dish. Mario learned how to make pasta; Alex learned how to cut vegetables; Bill discovered the art of cutting up an animal. Mastery is neither easy nor cheap, and for now I’ll live vicariously through them.