Recipes

My name is Brad English and I make pizzas. I have been told by my youngest that I am “ruining pizza” for my family. Now, to be fair to myself, she’s a fickle eater! She loves my pizza when I make it her way, which is with pepperoni or salami and “regular” mozzarella, just like she can get at any of our local pizzerias. I say to her, you have…Read More…

In my house it’s only my son, Owen, and I who love seafood. When making pizzas for the family I usually make one for us – something that is “our” pizza. One of my favorites to make is just starting with a nice simple marinara with great tomatoes, thinly sliced garlic and some oregano and olive oil as the base and add whatever seafood I’ve picked up. The marinara is…Read More…

I make a lot of pizza. In an attempt to keep things interesting, I do a fair bit of experimenting. I’m often inspired by an ingredient I got my hands on at Whole Foods, or another local market. I was lucky enough to bring home some beautiful Prosciutto and Nduja provided by La Quercia for the Forno Bravo Wood Fired Expo back in September. With a product like this in…Read More…

It’s funny how ideas come together.  About a year ago, I came up with the idea to cook up a burger patty and wrap it in a pizza dough and throw it in the oven. I love burgers and I love pizza. Why not? I’d have a fresh baked bun literally wrapped around my burger. It turned out to be more of a puff ball of dough that blew up…Read More…

What do you do when life gives you lemons? Well, of course, we all know you make lemonade! Recently, life delivered a volunteer jalapeño plant in a section of my yard that shouldn’t have been growing anything because my sprinklers are on the fritz and we’re in the middle of a drought here on the West Coast. A few weeks later, while the fire in my Primavera wood-fired oven was…Read More…

First of all, if you haven’t watched the series, Chef’s Table, on Netflix stop reading and go watch it, especially the episode I’m about to describe. If you don’t have Netflix, sign up; this post will be here when you get back! There was a visual moment in the episode about the brilliant, iconoclastic chef, Francis Mallmann, that is never spoken about in the narration, no dialogue, but it jumped…Read More…

There’s an old joke about timing.  “What’s the secret of telling a good joke?  TIMING!”  Of course, “timing” has to be said loudly and right over the end of the question.  Teach a little kid that joke and you’ll have a comedian on your hands.  Here’s a wonderful rendition of the joke I found on the internet: -Insert Video- Ok, so that’s pretty funny, right?  You can’t help but smile…Read More…

I have not always been a seafood lover. As a kid, back in the day, we loved shrimp of course. It seems most people do –  even non-seafood fans will eat some shrimp. We also grew up on fish sticks! I haven’t seen a fish stick in a long long time. I guess I graduated to loving a good fried cod as Fish and Chips. I won’t get off track…Read More…

Note from Peter: We’re still having some major problems with the photo upload and may have to do a major overhaul. But I didn’t want to delay sharing this great post by Brad English, so we’re breaking with tradition and putting it up without the usual mouth-watering photos. Just let your visual imagination roam and enjoy the story. Take it away Brad…. Note from Brad: I’ll post a couple pictures…Read More…

You only thought you didn’t have any pepperoni in the fridge! They say pepperoni is the most popular pizza topping in the United States.  I’m sure that the vast majority of that comes on delivery pizzas and your local town or chain pizzerias.  When we think of artisan pizza, pepperoni isn’t the first thing that comes to mind.  In fact, it’s the opposite…you’ll almost never see pepperoni on any artisan…Read More…