Actress Finola Hughes, host of the makeover show "How Do I Look?" on the Style Network, stood in the middle of her kitchen in her Santa Barbara-area home. An assortment of food, including a carton of chicken broth, a jar of plum jam, and a take-out box of white rice, was set out in front of her.

"I get overwhelmed," she said to chef Michael Schulson, who stood by her side.

"We're going to break it down," he assured her, sifting through the ingredients. "Are you ready to make the soup?"

As Ms. Hughes chopped ginger root and Mr. Schulson sliced scallions into slivers, the cameras zoomed in to get a close-up.

Ms. Hughes is being featured in the Nov. 7 episode of "Pantry Raid," a new cooking series debuting Wednesday on the Style Network. Mr. Schulson, executive chef of the Asian restaurant Buddakan NYC in New York, hosts the show, going to the homes of cooking novices like Ms. Hughes and using food on hand to create and present gourmet meals.

"With my friends, it's been a joke among them that I don't know how to cook,'' said Ms. Hughes, who played the part of Anna Devane on the soap operas "General Hospital" and "All My Children," in which she also played Anna's evil twin. "I kind of wanted to put an end to that and to find my own personality in the kitchen. This seemed like a perfect opportunity."

Juggling her work schedule and family -- she is married with two boys, ages 3 and 6 -- doesn't leave Ms. Hughes much time for learning her way around the kitchen.

"Before I met my husband, my diet consisted of toast and tea," she said. "The only thing I feel at home doing is baking cookies." Her husband felt at home in the kitchen, she said, but looking at books like "Joy of Cooking" just made her feel intimidated.

Chef Michael Schulson shows Finola Hughes how to make a meal with ingredients on hand during filming of the show "Pantry Raid." Above, Mr. Schulson and Ms. Hughes prepare a meal for the Nov. 7 episode in Ms. Hughes' kitchen. Nrloe, executive producer/director Bob Asher, left, discusses with Ms. Hughes how they will set the dinner table for presentation of the meal.

Ms. Hughes knew Mr. Schulson from his New York restaurant before the "Pantry Raid" episode was filmed, and on the show, she learned how to think about meals in a different way.

"He would not give me any kind of measurements," she said. Instead, he would give instructions in terms she would understand.

"He said 'when you're making the soup, it's like making tea,' " she said. "He kind of got me to understand what I was able to understand . . . He really kept giving me permission."

Mr. Schulson surprised her further when he left the kitchen and looked for edibles growing on her property. "He went out into my garden and looked at the fruit we have on the trees. Here I have all this great fruit on my trees and I never would have thought of doing that."

The goal of the episode was for Mr. Schulson to help Ms. Hughes put together a meal that would win the approval of her friends, culminating with a dinner party at her home. The theme of the meal, appropriately enough, was Asian.

''He was letting me into the secrets on Asian cooking," she said. In lieu of rigidly sticking to a set recipe, she learned about incorporating elements such as sour, sweet, acidic and crunchy into a meal. "That's how I like to eat -- I like all those elements." He also gave her some basic tips to make the process move more quickly, including a faster way to chop the ginger and a
method for coring a tomato so that the skin can be used without dealing with the gooey insides.

So how tough was it to prepare a meal in front of the cameras? "I was imagining 'Hell's Kitchen,' " admitted Ms. Hughes, referring to the trial-by-fire reality cooking show on the FOX
television network. Instead, "it was kind of a camaraderie." When asked if she would be able
to prepare a meal on her own now, she added "I feel confident that I would be able to do it."

One of her favorite parts of the episode was the plating, a term for presenting the food. "It just looked so gorgeous," she said of the way that he layered the elements of the meal. "I do a makeover show and it's all about aesthetics, so that jelled for me."

To hear the reactions of her dinner guests -- "all foodies and good cooks in their own right," she said -- you'll have to tune in to the episode. But for Ms. Hughes, being on Mr. Schulson's
show has already had a positive effect on her kitchen attitude.

"I didn't feel intimidated at all," she said, recalling the assurances she received from the chef himself: "You can't spoil anything, you can't make a mistake, it's all very salvageable."

e-mail: bhopkins@newspress.com

PANTRY RAID

Airs: 9 p.m. Wednesdays. Series premiere on Wednesday. (Ms. Hughes is featured in a November episode.)

Channel: The Style Network