It's Bliss at Boiling Point ; Heat by Bill Buford JONATHAN CAPE Pounds 16.99 (319Pp) Pounds 15.50 (Free P&p) on 0870 079 8897

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As career moves go, only Arthur Rimbaud's decision to become an arms dealer in Africa is comparable. After 24 years as a top-flight editor, first with Granta then The New Yorker, Bill Buford started working in the kitchen of Babbo, a fashionable Italian restaurant in Manhattan. This unlikely shift came about when he decided to write a profile of the restaurant's chef/patron Mario Batali, a Rabelaisian figure renowned for both his TV appearances and his appetites (he has been known to drink his way through half a case of wine over dinner).

Batali agreed to take on Buford as a "kitchen slave". His research rapidly revealed the yawning gulf between the enthusiastic amateur …