Recent Article written about Chez Boucher....

Releasing 'inner cook' with Chef Ron

By Michael McCord mmccord@seacoastline.com

Complete Business Index

Out On A Limb

GREENLAND -- Never in the history of Homo sapiens have we known so much about food and cooking and frankly wasted much of that knowledge. We live in the age of Food Network cooking glorification, millions of cookbooks and infinite Web-based food knowledge at our keyboard fingertips.

But for a majority of us, we give in to the quick-fix meal, whether of the fast-food or microwave-zapped variety, more often than we'd admit to anyone.

Ron Boucher would like to change all that. He has a peeve about meal preparation: We don't do enough of it. He also has a quest to unleash the "inner cook" within all of us -- and express our freedom from that most slavish of meal tyrants, the written recipe.

He also wants us to make eating our meals at home a "happier" experience.

"One of the biggest misconceptions (about cooking) is that it takes too much work and time," said Boucher, who shared with me his Zen master's approach. "All it takes is organization and planning."

Of course, that's easy for him to say. After all, Boucher is a certified executive chef who has forgotten more about cooking than I will likely ever learn.

Before I stopped by to talk to Boucher about Chez Boucher, the French cooking school he has run since 2002, I felt, well, inadequate.

And for good reason. My meal preparation skills are, at best, minimal, and I've managed successfully to block the growth of my "inner cook" since I burnt my batch of spaghetti sauce as a kid. (My organizational skills are also suspect.).

Given that I am not alone possessing these deficits of cooking, ah, character, it seems to me that he could run classes 24/7/365 and still only move a fraction of the population to a closer appreciation of cooking nirvana.

"We all have natural ability," Boucher told me in a patient tone of a good teacher and salesman. "If you explain the cooking process, you can be much more successful and not be overwhelmed."

I went to visit Boucher at his schoolhouse on Breakfast Hill Road (in a smart business move, he shares space with Artichokes Gourmet Shop), and found out more about this chef/teacher who used to be the owner of the popular Ron's Landing in Hampton.

Boucher has serious ambitions for Chez Boucher that stretch beyond his growing curriculum of classes for novices like you and me and other would-be aficionados. He is starting a soup-to-nuts, six-month culinary program -- the Chez Boucher Professional Cooking School -- that he intends to be a launching pad for folks looking for a career change or high school graduates seeking an alternate professional route.

"The demand for trained culinary professionals has never been higher," Boucher explained to me. The reason is the nationwide explosion in hospitality food services for institutions, restaurants, catering and private businesses.

Boucher said he wants to offer students "a cost-effective and time-affordable" way to receive "a good exposure to the business." Students will get serious hands-on time with Boucher and his pastry instructor, Steve James, a master baker.

He declines to call his new school a "boot camp." He prefers a "strong emphasis of fundamentals" approach -- food handling, preparation and production for a number of cuisines and pastries -- to the four-day-week, 576-hour track that culminates in a two-month "externship" at The Galley Hatch in Hampton.

At The Galley Hatch, students will be exposed to every aspect of the professional restaurant business and further refine their skills as a cook in the kitchen, making pastry, creating a catering menu, and working under pressure.

Boucher said the school's curriculum developed by him and other professional chefs isn't intended to quickly transform novices into chefs on the verge of signing a Food Network show deal.

"You will become a good cook because these skills can be taught," Boucher said. "Becoming a chef, much less a successful one, takes many more years of experience."

The school's tuition price of $10,500 may seem steep to an outsider, but Boucher said the time and cost alternative -- a traditional two-year program at traditional culinary college -- can cost as much as $40,000 to $50,000.

The small classes (12 students maximum) will embrace Boucher's passion for preparation, for pre-preparation and even more preparation as his charges will learn, he hopes, to "enjoy the process." Embracing this Zen-like approach, he said, makes the actual cooking "the easy part." It also makes the eating part all the better.

Boucher told me he has enjoyed his own journey to this point.

"Teaching has always been a lifelong goal of mine," said Boucher, a native of Amesbury, Mass. who has been a Seacoast-region culinary mainstay for more than 25 years.

He opened Chez Boucher as a part-time evening endeavor for folks looking to enhance their cooking skills in a wide range of cuisines.

"I've enjoyed the transition," said Boucher, who has directed all his energies to the school since selling Ron's Landing earlier this year. "It's easy to teach people who are passionate about food."

He believes his professional cooking school will provide a vital niche for a wide number of people. He's ready to unveil his marketing campaign in the next few weeks, one that includes cable television commercial spots on Rachael Ray programs on the Food Network.

Boucher is a strong advocate of the "Slow Food" movement, which encourages preparing good food from scratch and increasing awareness of what we cook and eat.

While not a big fan of the Food Network -- his favorite show is "The Great Chefs of North America" -- he does believe the food enetertainment industry has been beneficial to his profession.

"It has glamorized it in some ways, but it has given more exposure and added credibility to the trade," he said.

As for that all-important question, he said he does most of the cooking at home (when he's there, that is) for his wife and two sons.

While his family does eat quite well, there is one slight drawback. His eldest son has become, Boucher said, a "food snob. He thinks he lives in a restaurant."

Michael McCord is business editor of Herald Sunday and the Portsmouth Herald. He soon plans a journey to make hollandaise sauce from scratch, courtesy of a Chef Ron recipe.

Go to: http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/10152006/business-bizsun10.15_limb-chef.html to see complete article.