"This recipe is so great that I'm surprised that I haven't made it once a week. We did not use the ricotta cheese in the filling because it is not my favorite and I rarely if ever have it on hand. Never fear though, cooking with Bittman allows you to substitute and delete ingredients with no anxiety! Also, instead of the sausage I used rendered pepperoni. This is a trick I learned from America's Test Kitchen that stops pepperoni from greasing up your calzone. Now when my husband wants to order pizza I balk at the cost compared to the pennies I spend on this recipe."
I forgot to mention a few things and I was making calzones again last night, so I thought I would revisit this recipe. I think the key to these calzones cooking up correctly is that you don't add sauce to the filling. Instead make your fast tomato sauce and serve it on the side. This way your calzones cook all the way through and you don't end up with a slimy inner dough.
In the past I've cooked these on a stone, but last night I chose to put olive oil on a pan and cook them that way. The result was so delicious. The bottom crust of the calzone was nice and crisp. It even tasted a tad bit fried (YUMM!). I should note that I tend to roll out my dough a little thinner then Mark suggests and I also do not try to roll it out in a circle, but instead a long oval. I didn't really express this well in the first post, but we do replace all of the ricotta with mozzarella and the calzones are still really good.
Every time I make these I can't get over how crisp and non-slimy the calzones are. We even had a guest over on this night and she commented on the fact that the pepperoni was not greasy which is a result of the aforementioned pre-rendering in the microwave (30 seconds on two layers of paper towels does the trick).
Next I want to try the cooked spinach variation or I want to try and copy Mellow Mushroom's jerk chicken calzones. Both sound really good.
HTCE p. 183
HTCEV p.729
We make these a lot and even made them to stock our church freezer! We use a filling that's half cream cheese/mozzarella (or half cream cheese/half ricotta). We use cooked, drained spinach and/or sausage in them. Yummy! We like to dip them in marinara sauce. They freeze great once baked.
ReplyDeleteHow did I miss this comment? Half cream cheese? That sounds AWESOME!! I also love the idea of freezing them after they are baked. Thanks Betsy for all your tips.
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