Doris Light Zucchini Bread

Here’s one of those recipes that pops out of my folder when I see burstingly fresh zucchini at the produce stand. It’s adapted from a recipe that’s been passed around in my family as ‘Doris Fenton’s Zucchini Bread’ for donkey’s years, and so when I lightened up on the oil and tweaked other quantities to [...]

Totally Fresh Tomato Lasagna

West of Sienna, sunflowers paint the softly rolling hills as far as the eye can see. The road dips and sways through the Tuscan landscape, with shoulder high banks that rise to either side. Swallows glide on late afternoon thermals in the clear blue sky. At an opening to one field a man holds up cars to [...]

Fresh Blueberry Scones

Let me tell you about these blueberries that followed me home from California. There they were the other day, in a hunking great display the size of a small garden shed, right at the front of my local organic megastore: clamshell packages bursting with plump ripe fruit. Okay, these particular blueberries were not organic, but [...]

Antipasto Peppers with Italian Tuna

My Italian was not at all up to this. ‘Lo sportello automatico non pagare il denaro,’ I said to the beautifully tailored man across the desk from me – as close as I could get with my tourist phrase books to ‘the bank machine ate my money.’ I felt perspiration rise on the back of [...]

All Fired Up: Fresh Tomato and Mushroom Pizza with Truffle Oil

My daughter the Cake Princess looked quizzically at the dough laid out on a wooden peel in the kitchen. “Do you make pizza every day?” she asked, striking a pose. “Just this week,” I assured her. “Yeah, right,” she said, and flopped off to check her facebook page.

Thin to thick: Last week's selection

We’re all [...]

Huminta: A Bolivian Delight

I’ve never been to Bolivia, but I’ve been many times to the Copacabana Café in the Pike Place Market. A South American beer tastes fine there on one of those perfect Seattle afternoons, when mountains come out to stand boldly against a wondrously blue sky. Okay, they’re not the Andes. But perched there on the Copacabana’s deck, with [...]

Yemistes Domates: Vegetarian Stuffed Tomatoes

“No meat!” The Greek proprietor slashed the air with his pointed finger.  He bent behind the counter to pull out a large tray, which he proceeded to set before us. We inhaled the wonderful smell of tomatoes mixed with rice, onion and herbs. No meat. A smile spread across the face of my wife the Salad Queen.

We had come in from the late afternoon heat to [...]

French Flambé Pizza: Onion, Prosciutto and Comte with Cream Sauce

‘I don’t want to go bowling!’ My son stamped his foot.

‘When you’re in France,’ I said in my best, all-knowing fatherly voice, ‘you do what French people do.’ I ruffled his hair and he pulled away.

‘But bowling?’ he howled. ‘Who goes to France to go bowling?’

Well, I guess he had a point. When the Bullhogs [...]

Shitake Mushroom and Cambozola Pizza with Caramelized Onions

A friend who once owned a cheese shop told me the Cambozola story. That blue cheese with brie was a winning combination had been well known in cheese circles for years, but the French refused to adulterate their Camembert with blue cheese and the Italians didn’t want to tone down their gorgonzola. In 1970, a German [...]

Curried Red Beans with Carrots and Fennel

Here at Chez Bullhog, we love our beans. As a delicious comfort food, a hearty alternative to meat, or tender nuggets that suck up all kinds of exotic flavoring, they never fail to satisfy. And so when we learned that we could cook them the way people used to do it, with the bean pot right in [...]