Cook by the book: Recession puts novice cooks in kitchen

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.