See sample pages from this book at Wink.
White Heat has long been my White Whale when searching through used bookstores. I’ve wanted this book for going on ten years. The first time I heard the name Marco Pierre White I had been reading a copy of Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, wondering if I had what it takes to be a professional chef (I did not). Bourdain mentioned White’s book, saying that it was the first time he’d seen a “real” chef in a cookbook, a sleep-deprived, nicotine-fueled, mad man in the kitchen.
I thought that I’d finally found my copy when there was a re-release a few years back, but that paperback copy is the TV dinner to this 25th anniversary edition’s three-course meal. Can a home cook use any of these recipes? Maybe. The recipes are French. They’re complicated. And the ingredients include things like caviar, lobster, and pig trotter. But, the mistake is to think of this as a straight-up cookbook. You wouldn’t flip through a book on Picasso and expect to learn how to paint. This book is evidence in the argument that food can be art.
While you might not find a recipe for something to cook on a Tuesday night, you will find: Beautiful, gritty, black and white photography that makes you feel like you’re in the kitchen with this lunatic. A chef doing what chefs do, smoke. The word “fuck” on more than one page. A fresh-faced Gordon Ramsey before he started calling people “donkeys.” And a handful of recipes for dishes that allowed White to become the youngest chef to hold three Michelin Stars. White Heat 25 is fitting for any bookshelf, coffee table, or kitchen counter.
– JP LeRoux
White Heat 25
by Marco Pierre White (author) and Bob Carlos Clarke (photographer)
Mitchell Beazley
2015, 192 pages, 9.9 x 12.5 x 0.8 inches