The glories of food

摘要

However enthusiastic and know-ledgeable their authors may be, books about food are rarely as palatable as the meals they describe. Accounts of other people's eating lose a lot in the telling, while kitchen horror stories may be gripping, but fail to satisfy. Bill Buford's "Heat" is a glorious exception. The author is a world-class word-smith: a writer on the New Yorker and before that the founding editor of Britain's best fiction periodical, Granta, He is also a keen but (by his own admission) "funda-mentally clueless" amateur cook. He lacks a sense for time and quantities; he can't plan. The food that he inflicts on his friends is burnt or raw or both.