Cooks out of control

Cooks out of control
Last night to the LRB bookshop to hear Bill Buford enthuse about the transgressive behaviour of the larger-than-life cooks he’s been privileged to associate with. His new book Heat is a natural sequel, it seems, to his earlier tale, Among The Thugs, of consorting with football hooligans. It’s all about passion, of course. Perhaps the mysterious popularity cooking has enjoyed recently is something about it being an acceptable way to express passion.

The most interesting part of the evening was prompted by a question — why are the English uninterested in food? The thesis was that our interest — and that of the Americans too? — is in a fantasy about food, expressed in the ‘theming’ of restaurants. We are more concerned our Italian restaurants should look Italian than that the food should taste any particular way.

Buford didn’t offer an answer, but told how the English custom of cooking for friends in your own home had got him a reputation in New York as a gourmet cook, and so led him to his apprenticeships with celebrated chefs Marco Pierre White and Mario Batali. (Of course, this doesn’t distinguish us from the French or the Italians, but only the Americans. Or rather, I should hasten to say, from New Yorkers.)

In Italy Buford had learned from a Dante-quoting butcher that European fine cooking originated there in the Renaissance, but moved to Paris when Catherina dei Medici married the French king and took all the cooks to her new home.