Dirt

Bill Buford

3 ideas

1. American writer apprentices in Lyon kitchens

   In his fifties, Bill Buford moved his wife and young twin sons from New York to Lyon for about five years to learn French cooking from the ground up. He trained at the Institut Paul Bocuse, worked pre-dawn shifts at a neighborhood bakery, and then worked in the kitchen of La Mère Brazier, a historic restaurant run by chef Mathieu Viannay. There he started at the bottom of the brigade and worked his way onto the line, while his sons, schooled locally, became more fluent and more French than their parents.

2. Cuisine grows out of local soil

   The book's title points to dirt in the literal sense of terroir. Lyon's cooking is presented as an outgrowth of what the surrounding land, rivers and farms produce, and of the working people who cooked it, such as the Lyonnaise mères. On this view, a regional cuisine is an agricultural and economic fact before it becomes a canon of recipes. Studying the local land, markets and suppliers tells you more about a cuisine than studying famous chefs.

3. Learning kitchen craft through repetition and correction

   In the kitchens where he trains, Buford learns techniques such as sauces, butchery and bread shaping largely by repeating them under pressure and being corrected until they become physical habits, alongside whatever explanation he gets. He describes the brigade hierarchy and the harshness of kitchen life as part of the experience without presenting the abuse as a good teacher. His account suggests this kind of skill takes long practice and can't come from reading alone.

Save and mark ideas in the app