Vegetable Calzones
Perhaps making a recipe that needs a 400 degree oven wasn’t the smartest idea on a day when the temperature outside felt only slightly cooler. But you know what it’s like, once you’ve started a dinner plan it can be hard to switch gears. We’ve made pizza many times and it’s a great meal to make with kids. It’s so easy for them to help out and you know they’re going to want to eat it. But tonight we made calzones, or pizza sandwiches as I told Esme. We made spinach mushroom calzones but you could use anything you’d put on pizza – peppers, sausage, olives, whatever you like.
I made the sauce in the afternoon and if you were more organized you could also prep your vegetables in advance, too.
Ingredients
- For the sauce:
- 1 onion finely chopped
- 2 garlic cloves minced
- 1 28 ounce can of plum tomatoes
- good splash of red wine vinegar
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- a big pinch of dried or fresh oregano
- salt and pepper to taste
- For the Calzones
- 1 bag of wholewheat pizza dough from the grocery store or homemade
- splash of olive oil
- 2 cups of mushrooms diced
- 2 cups of spinach chopped
- pinch of dried or fresh thyme
- 1 cup of tomato sauce
- 1 cup shredded mozzarella
- 1 small handful of corn meal
Method
For the sauce:
Saute the onion and garlic.
Drain the tomatoes and either mush them with your hands or break them up with the back of a wooden spoon.
Add tomotoes to the onion mixture.
Add the rest of the ingredients and allow to simmer for about 30 minutes until it cooks down and becomes thick.
For the calzones:
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
Saute the mushrooms in a splash of olive oil.
When they begin to soften, add the spinach and thyme.
Allow the spinach to really wilt and then take it off the heat.
Separate the dough into four pieces.
Sprinkle corn meal on your counter rather than flour, it stops the dough from sticking and gives a nice crunch to your crust.
Roll out the dough into about 8 inch circles.
Place a spoon full of sauce, then a spoon full of vegetables, then a small handful of cheese on one side of your circle of dough
Leave a small border at the edges so that you can seal the calzones.
Once they're filled, gently pull the empty side over and crimp the calzones closed( tightly or they'll leak!)
Place them on a cookie sheet in a hot oven for 20 to 30 minutes to cook
Esme tore herself away from the t.v. (okay, Dora was over anyway) to come and help me put the calzones together.
The crust should be toasty brown and not at all doughy. Mine weren’t pretty in the end but they were super tasty.
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We're Ceri and Laura, a couple of magazine-editors-turned-food-bloggers. Also, we're mothers obsessed with delicious, healthy, family food. We're constantly thinking of ways to make your time (and our own!) in the kitchen easier and more productive, but still nostalgic for the days when dinner was cereal eaten over the kitchen sink.
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