homemade calzones | Bewitching Kitchen

Do you think it would be too hard to enjoy calzones made from scratch right in the middle of the week? Trust me, it is doable with just a little bit of advance prep. First, the day before (or early in the morning), make your favorite pizza dough. Place it in the fridge. Also the day before, prepare the fillings, and reserve in the fridge, right next to the dough. When you arrive home from work, take the dough off the fridge and let it warm a little as you heat the oven. Roll the dough out, add the filling, close the calzone, and bake!

SPICY CHORIZO CALZONES
(from The Bewitching Kitchen)

1 recipe for pizza dough (click here for my favorite)
3 chorizo sausages, casings removed
1 can (14.5 oz) diced fire roasted tomatoes
1/2 Tbs olive oil
1 box (10 oz) frozen spinach, defrosted, squeezed dry
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 egg
salt and pepper
1 cup mozzarella cheese, grated
egg wash (1 egg beaten with a little water)
homemade tomato sauce to serve alongside (optional)

Prepare the dough the day before or early in the morning. Place it in the fridge until dinner time. Make the filling: heat the olive oil, and add the chorizo sausage, crumbling it into pieces. Saute the sausage until it starts to get browned, drain the diced tomatoes, and add to the sausage. Reduce the heat, cover the pan and cook for 5 minutes. Let it cool, and place in the fridge.

Remove the dough from the fridge, cut it in four pieces, and turn the oven at 400 F. Squeeze as much water as you can from the spinach, add it to ricotta cheese, season with salt and pepper, add the egg and mix.

Roll out each ball of dough to a 7-inch diameter round. Add a little bit of sausage mixture, the ricotta/spinach, and grated mozzarella. Fold the dough over, pinch the edges to seal, brush the surface with egg wash. Cut three slits with a sharp knife, place it in the oven. Bake for 25 minutes until golden brown. Serve with tomato sauce and a salad, and you are all set!

ENJOY!

to print the recipe, click here

These will turn any dinner into something special and festive, and they are sooo easy to make! I used a very spicy chorizo, but the ricotta mellowed it down quite a bit. Sometimes I do not add any egg to the ricotta, but in this version I did, to make sure the filling would have a bit more body. If the filling is too liquid, the bottom of the calzone might get soggy. Of course, this is a perfect recipe to improvise, coming up with different ingredients: sautéed mushrooms, black olives, a little Gorgonzola cheese, artichoke hearts, anything goes!

I like my calzones either plain, or with a little bit of tomato sauce, but others are known to go for the kill… 😉