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
