Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking

Essence. Readers with any interest in food, France, people, stories and relationships will find many things to enjoy while reading Bull Buford’s book titled, Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking. My taste for this book started when I read Buford’s excerpt in The New Yorker about a baker named Bob in Lyon, France. When this book was released this month, I was prepared to devour it, and I did. Buford makes it all look easy. What he does is cook down people and stories until he uncovers the essence. It takes a while to realize that what we get in this book is the distillation of many years of his engagement with chefs, cooking, and writing. I encountered chef Michel Richard from his Citronelle restaurant in Washington and thought of him as a creative and whimsical restauranteur. I learned, as Buford did, that the late Richard was a traditional French chef, who avoided cooking those things that he had not yet found a way to make better than the traditional method. His dishes were rooted in tradition and made better thanks to his skill and creativity. That’s just one example from this book. Buford uses self-deprecating humor to move the story along, and his family’s experience to balance work and home life as he tried to learn all he could about French cooking. Pick your favorite menu item: the view as husband, father, apprentice chef, mentee, writer, friend; and savor this book’s richness. Rating: Five-star (I love it) Click here to purchase Dirt from amazon.com.