Cook by the book: Recession puts novice cooks in kitchen

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jun 24, 2009 | by Compiled by Valerie Phillips Deseret News

Recession-plagued Americans are coming back to their kitchens. But that doesn't mean they all know how to prepare a meal.

Frequent restaurant dining has expanded people's taste buds but left their cooking skills lacking.

All that chopping, mixing, boiling and baking can be daunting for those whose skills are rusty, or who never learned in the first place.

There are tons of cookbooks by celebrity chefs and TV cooks, but many of them are collections of recipes that don't share a lot of cooking knowledge. There's nothing that tells you how to perform those mystifying directions, such as "deglaze the pan" or "make a roux."

Although "Joy of Cooking" guided novice cooks of past generations, at 800-plus pages and no photos, it could be a tough read for the Facebook crowd.

Professional culinary books are complicated and expensive. And while a viewer can pick up skills by watching the Food Network, it's not a reference that you can pull out when you're in the middle of cooking.

Enter "The First-Timer's Cookbook," (Bookwise, $12.95) by chef Shawn Bucher of South Ogden. The 85-page book explains, in simple terms, basic cooking principles to use with any recipe, or to create your own recipes.

It's studded with step-by-step photos showing such things as how to peel a cantaloupe, chop an onion, coat meats with breading, set a proper table, mash potatoes or keep pasta from getting overdone.

Bucher, an instructor at Salt Lake City's Art Institute, is a graduate of the Davis Applied Technology Center's culinary program and earned his cooking chops in local kitchens: Christopher's, Salt Lake Brewing Co., Oakridge Country Club, Skybox Sports Grille, Little America, Rumbi Island Grill, Cabo Grill and Costa Vida.

"I was able to move up fairly quickly," he said. "I wanted to work as many hours as I could early on, to experience everything that was out there in my field and decide what I wanted to do."

He realized that he loved teaching cooking skills, "and I decided this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my career."

The idea for a book was sparked when a friend asked Bucher to teach him to cook. Bucher looked for a cookbook that might help his friend but couldn't find what he was looking for.

"We found big professional chef books about how to do pates and things that home cooks never do. And the 'Betty Crocker,' 'Better Homes & Gardens' and 'Joy of Cooking' books can be overwhelming. People have short attention spans."

He spent three years writing the book and getting it published. That entailed shooting more than 1,300 photos in 41/2 days.

"Initially it would be a book that every time I got asked to teach someone to cook, I could hand it out," he said. "But it's evolving into a 13-volume series, such as the 'First-Timer's Baking' book, 'First-Timer's Italian.' I have been writing these other volumes as I see what people are struggling with in the kitchen."

The book is designed as a reference guide, showing basic principles that can carry over to many different dishes. So, there are ratios instead of recipes. For example, "Fill a pot with at least twice the water as you have pasta," or "The ratio of rice to water to liquid is 2 to 1. So when you're cooking rice, make sure that if you have one cup of rice, you put in two cups of water."

But there are a few instances when more proportions would be helpful. In Bucher's steps for making sauces, the directions say, "Add the appropriate amount of flour to the melted butter. ..." It would help to have an idea of what that "appropriate" ratio of butter, flour and stock would be. Bucher said in future editions of the book he may provide more actual recipes.

In addition to the Art Institute, Bucher teaches many classes at local venues such as For Your Cooking, Orson Gygi and Macey's in Ogden. He's noticed that home cooks tend to follow what they saw their mom or grandma do, and those techniques may not be the safest, fastest or easiest.

"Families can hand down a lot of good things and a lot of good recipes, but they can also hand down some bad habits. If you watch your mom or grandmother cut things like potatoes with a knife, you may think it looks safe enough since they're not cutting themselves each time. But then you watch a professional chef slice up an onion in half the time, all the while keeping his fingers next to the blade. If your mom or grandmother were to go that fast, cutting the way they usually do it, they would definitely be losing some fingers."

Also, "Maybe your mom liked the broccoli falling apart and mushy olive green. But if you learn the principles, you know that if you prefer to have your broccoli bright and not mushy, you cook it a little bit less."

There's very little microwaving in his book, aside from the suggestion that potatoes can be baked in the microwave to cut down the cooking time.

"Professional cooks don't have microwaves," he said. "Microwaving generally deteriorates the product a little bit. It depends on what and how you are cooking, though."

His book came out mid-March. Of the 5,000 copies printed, he's sold about 1,000 at Orson Gygi, For your Kitchen in Ogden, Orchard Drug in Bountiful, in his cooking classes and at his Web site, www.firsttimers cookbook.com.