"Never play cards with a guy named Doc, never eat at a place called Mom's, and never order pasta after 10 p.m."

		"HEAT: AN AMATEUR'S ADVENTURES AS KITCHEN SLAVE, LINE COOK, PASTA-MAKER, AND APPRENTICE TO A DANTE-QUOTING BUTCHER IN TUSCANY" By Bill Buford Knopf ($25.95)

The third tip comes from Elisa, a cook at Babbo, Mario Batali's precious little restaurant near Washington Square in Manhattan.

The water in Babbo's pasta pot is never changed once the dinner operation starts, creating this kitchen condition:

"Midway through the service, the shiny bottom of the pasta cooker disappeared. This was the cloudy phase, about two hours before the muddy one when the water ceased being normal water and became an increasingly thick vehicle for soluble starch."

Bill Buford, the putative amateur of his book's subtitle, is feeding us one of his tidbits gleaned from nearly a year and a half working in Batali's kitchen.

The red-haired celebrity chef accepted Buford as a galley slave because he was writing Batali's profile for the New Yorker magazine and Mario is not one to pass up molto publicity. Much of this book is lifted from that profile.

So, despite the abuse he suffered at Babbo -- sliced fingers, burned arms, long hours and regular nasty assaults, some physical, from Batali and his crew, Buford was living his foodie's dream life and getting well paid for it by the magazine.

The payoff to write about New York's culinary star certainly included a hefty advance check from Knopf as well. Mastering kitchen skills and feeling like a talented cook, was, well, just so much gravy.

Buford diligently reports from the front line of Babbo, spiced with Batali's showy if adolescent excesses and meaty chunks of Manhattan restaurant gossip, to complete his magazine assignment, but "Heat" is really two books.

Bored by the growing monotony of working in Batali's kitchen, Buford indulges his growing obsession with cooking and goes to Italy to learn how to make pasta by hand and butcher beef in the Tuscan manner.

He apprenticed at Betta's pasta kitchen in Poretta Terme between Bologna and Florence and then to Dario's meat shop in Panzano in the Chianti region of Tuscany.

There he makes a startling discovery: "Small food -- good; big food -- bad."

Life is slower in Italy, where it dawns on Buford, years after the rest of us, that locally grown and prepared food and drink are better than agribusiness products. It inspires a slice of hyperbole as well:

"Food made by hand is an act of defiance and runs contrary to everything in our modernity. Find it; eat it; it will go. It has been around for millennia. Now it is evanescent, like a season."

But, seasons aren't evanescent; they return, just as the practice of cooking at home has. The kind of readers Buford is writing for knows that, but, like a little boy who has learned how to tie his shoes, he can't stop showing off his newly acquired talents, opinions and food geekiness.

When he's not butchering a whole pig in his apartment or rolling pasta into thin, translucent sheets, Buford turns officious researcher, hunting tirelessly for that critical time in Italian history when eggs were first used in pasta dough. It's a subject that understandably leaves the Italians -- and us -- unmoved.

The best food writers captured a sense that there were mystery and magic in the making of a great meal. Buford sees cooking as blood, sweat and the right tools and techniques. A few afternoons of research in the library can be a big help, too.

I don't doubt his sincerity and enthusiasm. I only wish he had made it sound like more fun.