More Cheese More Chocolate

For the last five years I’ve had this bad habit of tearing out recipes from magazines and then never actually using them.  In fact, I have three big binders full of recipes from a variety of magazines, most of which I’ve never made.  Since I’ve become aware of my recipe hoarding tendencies, I’ve been resisting the urge to rip out every recipe that I see and think that I might want to make one day.  This is one of my first attempts to really change my ways.  I saw this recipe in a magazine a couple of months ago, and I decided to try it before ripping it out and stowing it away.  It’s a keeper, and since I’m posting it on here I don’t even need to tear out the page.  Let’s file that under “success.”

The recipe is originally from Real Simple, and I made a few changes to make it more to my liking.  The biggest change was swapping pizza dough for pie crust, transforming the turnovers to calzones.  I figured that if the filling didn’t turn out to be that great, at least it would be stuffed inside a pocket of delicious pizza dough.  In my world pizza dough beats pie crust. Other tweaks: using Jarlsberg instead of Gruyère because Jarlsberg was a lot cheaper and using dried thyme because I neglected to add fresh thyme to my grocery list.

Sweet Potato Calzones

Adapted from Real Simple, September 2010

*Makes four calzones

• Pizza dough
• 1 white onion
• 1-2 sweet potatoes
• 1 bunch Swiss chard, thick stems removed and leaves sliced into 1″ strips
• 4 oz. (or more) Gruyère, Jarlsberg, or something similar
• 2 tsp dried thyme

I made a batch of Jim Lahey’s pizza dough (this time I only used bread flour – no whole wheat flour) a few hours before I was going to make the calzones, and then divided into four pieces for four calzones.

• In a food processor with the shredder attachment, shred the cheese, then the onion, and then the sweet potato.

• Heat a little oil in a large skillet, and sauté the onion for several minutes, until it softens.

• Add the chard to the softened onion

• Cook the mixture for a few minutes, until the chard wilts.

• In a large bowl mix together the onions, chard, cheese, sweet potatoes, and thyme.  Season with salt & pepper.

• On a floured surface, roll out each piece of dough until it’s roughly 8″ around, or about 1/4″ thick.
• Top half of it with a healthy heap of the filling, leaving about 1/2″ around the edge.
• Dot the edge with water, fold the top over the filling, and press the edges together to seal.

• Transfer filled calzones to a lightly oiled baking sheet, and use a serrated knife to cut a few slits in the top.

Note: I was following the original recipe when I put egg wash over one of the calzones, and then it dawned on me that I was using pizza dough and not pie dough and egg wash isn’t really necessary.  Feel free to use it, though.  Also, I used a quarter of the dough to make a pizza.  I couldn’t resist.

• Bake at 425 until the crust is golden – maybe 30 minutes?  I can’t remember exactly how long it took.

Egg washed calzone

Non-egg washed calzone

See the filling that oozed out onto the baking sheet and burned?  It’s much easier to clean it off of a baking sheet than it is to clean it off of a pizza stone.  I’d stick with the baking sheet method if I were you.  I’ve scrubbed my pizza stone a few times, and I still haven’t gotten all of the char to come off.

Cherry tomatoes + fresh mozzarella pearls + fresh basil

Dinner