Calzone

Ingredients:
Dough
Cheese
Small onion
Small green bell pepper
Meat of choice
Olive oil or butter
Tomato sauce

If you’re looking for the number to Pizza Hut or the Dough Bowl, stop your search and put on your adventurous little chef apron and make it yourself.

Start with the dough. Portion it into four small sections or divide it in half for two larger calzones. Flatten out the dough as if you were making a pizza. Baste it with olive oil or butter. This will be the outside of the calzone. Set it to the side.

Now, for the meat you can either buy pre-cooked meat or poultry — some good choices are chicken, sausage or ham – or you can buy fresh meat and cook it yourself. Next, cut up the vegetables. If you cook the meat, start it at medium and when it’s about halfway done, add the vegetables to the pan. Keep it on the stove until the meat is cooked thoroughly and the vegetables are soft.

Once you finish preparing the meat, spread the tomato sauce over half of each dough round. Sprinkle cheese on the sauce, then add the meats and vegetables on top of that.

Close up the dough and pinch the ends on the rounded side to keep the calzone from leaking. Again, baste the outside of the dough with olive oil or butter.

Bake the calzone at 450 degrees. Its done when it’s a golden brown on the outside and when you can smell the deliciousness permeating from the oven about the room.

A variation of this is the seafood calzone with shrimp or crab meat. With these options, I’d suggest you use a cheese sauce like alfredo instead of tomato sauce. You can even make it all vegetable or all meat. It’s really depends on the amount of adventure you’re in for.

Michael Jackson can be reached at [email protected].