May 6--CAMBRIDGE, Mass--In her old life as an employee of Radcliffe College, Julie Burba spent her days surrounded by the bland ingredients of the working world: telephone calls, e-mails, photocopiers, and staff meetings. 

What a difference a layoff makes. These days, Burba chops vegetables with newfound precision, takes seminars on cheese and chocolate, and carefully purees fennel to accompany her bacon-wrapped pork medallions with a cassis reduction. It's her new life in cooking school -- the same place a sizable number of victims of the economic recession have turned for new careers. 

What is more stable, after all, than a hearty meal? 

"When I got the big pink slip, on the way back to my office, it was like I had a big epiphany: I was going into cooking," said Burba of Watertown, stirring her pureed fennel recently, while clad in chef's whites and a baseball cap. "I had a lot of friends who got laid off and just scrambled to find a job.... If I ever get laid off, I thought, 'What would I do in my second life?' And in my second life, I'd go into cooking." 

The Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, which Burba entered two months after getting laid off, has seen an unusual jump in the number of career-changers enrolling in its intense, 10-month professional chef's program. Its most recent class, which will graduate in June, includes laid-off dot-com workers, graphics artists, bankers, and public-relations professionals such as Burba, 37, whose job evaporated in July 2001, nearly two years after Radcliffe merged with Harvard University. 

The Cambridge School of Culinary Arts typically has attracted people looking for a new line of work: Last year, 69 percent of students studying to be professional chefs were career-changers. This year, that's up to 78 percent, and 12 percent of those used to be high-tech professionals. 

Other cooking schools have recorded less of a spike because they offer two- or four-year culinary degrees for people for whom cooking is a longtime career choice. 

Still, even those schools have seen more of an interest from culinary novices. The Culinary Institute of America, the gold standard of cooking schools, located in Hyde Park, N.Y., recorded a 32 percent increase in inquiries this year. And last year, career-switchers comprised 16 percent of its class, up from 13 percent the year before. 

Roberta Dowling, director of the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, notices another factor: the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which was an eye-opener for people unhappy in their jobs. 

"I'm seeing a higher percentage of career-changers and a different attitude," said Dowling, who founded the Porter Square school 27 years ago. "I'm seeing, 'I've always wanted to do this, and now I'm going for it.' I attribute it to people beginning to set priorities after 9/11 and looking for things that make them happy." 

That was the case with Stephen Conti, 26, who lost his job in high-tech sales in October. The Northeastern University business graduate spent three months drawing up future job plans before deciding on cooking. 

Conti, of Watertown, was no gastronomic neophyte: He cooked for friends and enjoyed doing it. But he knew nothing of the science behind food. So when his first chocolate eclair turned out to be not only edible but appealing, he was ecstatic. 

"You know you're going to screw up in the beginning, but it turned out," Conti said as he monitored a meringue for a Bavarian cake. "I realized from day one that I can actually do something that came out pretty darn well." 

Are culinary careers really in these cooks' futures? Many used to comfortable incomes probably won't go into restaurant work because of the relatively low pay and long hours. Instead, they're exploring catering, recipe writing, food writing, or even product testing for cooking appliances. Conti recently landed a job with a local catering company. 

"I'm used to working 8 to 6. Now, it's going to be evenings, weekends, holidays. And the money's not that great. Those two things are the problems I'm going to have with it," Conti said. "But it goes back to the passion for it, and I decided to pursue something I enjoyed. They always say if you want to love what you do, do what you love." 

Conti made the job turnaround relatively early in his working life, but many of his classmates pursued careers for decades before taking the plunge. John Kennedy of Lexington, who will graduate in June with a chef's diploma, is 56 years old and spent more than 30 years in banking and finance before realizing that he had "classic burnout." 

Kennedy, who had but a "mean meatloaf" to his culinary repertoire and a passing interest in the field, decided to give the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts a try. His first day of class was Sept. 10, and the events of the next day cemented his decision to make the change. 

"Once I started doing something different, I haven't regretted it for a minute," Kennedy said. "It's just really fun to think about other possibilities." 

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(c) 2002, The Boston Globe. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.