“Spring green” is a common phrase and color name. The spring in California is rich with greens: before we get to the reds, blues and yellows of summer we have pea green, asparagus green, artichoke green. And in the farm box we have beet greens, Swiss chard, kale, green garlic, spring onions, lettuce, bok choy and peas. It is little wonder I was drinking my greens recently, shoving some spinach into a smoothie to make way for new rounds of greens.
I have made pizza for many years and somehow never made the leap to calzones. The dough is the same, the famous Cheese Bread sourdough recipe made with a cupful of whole wheat flour. The technique for shaping calzones is the same: you begin with eight small disks instead of three larger ones and go through the dimpling and pulling process.
I might have gone another few years without making calzones, except that Betsy’s recipe for calzones caught my eye and lingered in my imagination. Betsy made hers with fresh kale. I made mine with leftover cooked chard. I followed Betsy’s guidelines for the cup of feta and the 1/4 cup of dry cheese, but I used pecorino Romano where she used Parmesan.
Most of you know the drill for sourdough by now: if you want sourdough pizza, bread, waffles or biscuits you have to make up a sourdough starter. You need to feed it occasionally, but if you use it once a week or more it doesn’t take much care and feeding. I fed my starter yesterday morning with a half cup of water and a half cup of unbleached flour, shook it a few times and left it out on the counter. Come afternoon I came back and made pizza dough with a half cup of starter, 2 and 1/4 cups flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour and a generous teaspoon of kosher salt. Read the gory details here.
This morning I took my pizza dough out of the fridge at eight. At 10:22 I removed its dish towel, formed the dough into eight small rounds, floured the damp towel and let the dough sit while I made filling. I also put my pizza stone in the oven and cranked the heat up to 450, deploying three racks: one for the pizza stone, two for the trays of calzones.
First step: dump cooked chard from frying pan into pizza dough bowl (Why do more dishes than you have to?). Heat same frying pan over medium heat while you slice the white of a small leek and the shoots of some green garlic, wipe 3/4 of a pound of mushrooms with a clean damp cloth and slice them. Add olive oil to the skillet and saute your leeks and garlic while you continue to slice mushrooms. Add leeks and garlic to chard. Saute mushrooms in two batches, adding oil as necessary. While you have the oil out, lightly oil two pizza pans. Add sauteed mushrooms to chard, leeks and garlic. Crumble 1 cup of feta into the vegetables. Use microplane to grate 1/4 cup dry cheese over top. Grate some nutmeg to taste and add a sprinkle of red pepper flakes.
At this point, the faint-hearted or fanatically germ-phobic might give this mixture a stir, but I like to work with my hands, so I plunged my hands into the bowl and mixed. Then I washed and dried my hands before turning to the dough.
Using the dimpling and stretching techniques detailed in the pizza post I made my eight disks into eight five-inch circles, one at a time, so that I could fill and fold each calzone before making the next one. Again, I used my hands to scoop filling onto half of each calzone, but the fastidious may use a spoon and the precise may use a scoop or measuring cup, but you will need to use your hands to fold the crust over the filling and seal the edges.
Once your calzones are filled, folded and sealed, give each one slash with a sharp knife to allow steam to escape. I use a stainless steel steak knife. If you keep a clean razor in your kitchen that will work, too.
I put one tray of calzones in while I filled the others. When the second batch was filled and folded I switched the first tray to a higher rack and started the second one on the middle rack. In ten minutes, I switched them again. We like things toasty and brown so the first tray was probably in the oven about thirty minutes. When I took the first tray out I turned off the oven and let the second tray finish cooking from the residual heat of the oven and the pizza stone.
By the way, I did not make the dough green. It is not St. Patrick’s Day. If you eat your spring greens you will see plenty of that color.
Food Notes: Betsy serves her calzones with marinara, which I’m sure is good. We ate ours plain to get maximum crust effects. Variations are legion: you can use any cheese you like, although the combination of a creamy one and a dry one produces a nice texture and flavor without a grease factor. If I could only have two cheeses for cooking they would be feta and Parmesan so Betsy’s choice worked for me, but you could use goat cheese and dry Jack or ricotta and Asiago. If you won’t eat or drink your greens, stick to mushrooms or pile in some meat. I badly wanted to add some roasted red peppers, but I didn’t want the mixture to be too wet, and I would have added sun-dried tomatoes if I hadn’t eaten them all by March. The same dough that makes crisp thin crust pizza transforms into a breadier dough you can hold in your hand when stuffed in this manner. Enjoy.
Blog Notes: Twice in the last week kind persons have nominated me for the Liebster Blog Award, an award for blogs with under 200 subscribers. While “The Kale Chronicles” fits that size, it has been previously nominated more than once. Because it can be difficult to establish how large or small a blog is, I will merely encourage you to visit the folks who nominated me, Peri’s Spice Ladle (Indian specialties) and artratcafe. (original art and occasional wonderfully illustrated posts of food descriptions from literature). I will further encourage you to visit Susartandfood. (I go for the stories).
This calzone sounds really good, Sharyn. I saw one made last week on a show and considered making one for myself over the weekend. I went a different route, however, and it will be this coming week’s post. Still, you’ve convinced me to make a calzone when I get back home. Leeks & chard would make for one good pie!
Thank you, John. I make a lot of things with chard and feta together: quiche, wontons, and now calzones.
MMMM… leeks and chard. My family wants me to make calzones now.
I’ll bet you have some great recipes, Connie.
Honestly, I had my first calzone a week ago…at the hospital. They have always seemed a little calorie-dense for me, and I’ve opted for other choices. I needed comfort food, so…yep! I had my first calzone and loved it. And that was hospital food…so now I’m quite excited to give this a try. I love the chard/feta combination, and I doubt I need to tell you that the hospital didn’t go to that bold flavor! :-I started following your blog post-summer…I’m excited to see what you have up your sleeve with all the good produce coming in soon! Debra
Thank you, Debra. I’ll do my best. I started the blog in late August of last year which is our warm weather, so I’ve already featured a tomato tart, a greek salad and my favorite summer breakfast, polenta with peaches. Maybe I’ll do a seasonal retrospective around my anniversary.
Sounds yummy… thanks for the link to your starter, too!
You are welcome, Nancy.
Fastidious moi? Non! Nothing better than getting your hands in to do the real work.
I like the flavours Sharyn (a feta fan too) and I’ve had calzone a few times but it always comes with lots of ham, mushrooms and mozzarella so is very rich, and not a pizza I tend to eat as a general rule. Whilst yours (and Betsy’s) seems more flavoursome with the spring greens.
I agree, Claire. The longer I live the more I find that using my hands is the easy way to do things in the kitchen.
Calzones are so beating pizza these days – your version sounds incredible 😀
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
Thank you, CCU.
Yay! Today is the first day of my local farmers market, so now I’m going to stock up on ingredients to make green calzones!
Farmers’ markets are the best — I’m sure you’ll find plenty to choose from.
I too have never made the leap to calzone for some reason or another.
I loved all the different shades of green you mentioned in your post 🙂
I’m sure you could make beautiful and delicious calzones, Sawsan. Right now we have to eat greens twice a day to use them all.
even though i make pizzas at home, i have never ever tried making calzones. the stuffing in your calzone is so good. i am especially fond of leeks, garlic and mushrooms.
Calzones aren’t any harder than pizzas, Dassana, and they made for a nice change.
I’m just getting out (from under work) today, and thank you so much for the shout out, Sharyn! I’m so pleased you tried green calzones, and I just love the chard/leek/feta combo. I’ll have to try that, and maybe I’ll get up the gumption to try your pizza dough recipe, too!
Let’s see. So far I’ve made versions of your green chicken enchiladas, your clafouti, your calzones and those delicious almonds. I think that’s more than I’ve cooked from any other blog.
Ive never made a calzone Sharyn, I don’t even think I’ve ever had one! Betsy’s recipe intrigued me and now yours does too. Very nice indeed.
Thank you, Eva. Perhaps you’ll try them when you are no longer restricting carbs.
I’ve made calzones several times- but never with the items you used. I have used pesto, feta, spinach. I will try this version next. Thanks.
Calzones with pesto sound wonderful, Jane.
I read, “Salute your leeks and garlic,” instead of “sauté,” which in a sense is appropriate as good food well prepared commands a sense of reverence and there is no better way to make good food than to dig in with bare hands, fearlessly. Those must have been very satisfying calzones.
They are good, Granny (We are still eating them). I often forget to salute my leeks and garlic — must remedy that…
Yes you must!
I too have never made calzone, don’t know why I never thought of doing so, since it is quite similar to making the baked Chinese roast pork buns which is also a yeast dough.
I love pork buns, Norma. If I made them I might not be making calzone!
I was gifted a starter several years ago and it is still happy in the back of my fridge. Thanks for the reminder – it’s time to bake again soon!! Oh hungry now!!
That starter is sturdy stuff, Happy baking.
Sharyn, this is a new one for me. Thought of you. I’ve been nominated for a new award and I’m nominating you as I pass it on. Always a pleasure to visit here and want to share it with others. You can see it on my site http://www.susartandfood.com and check out the award site to get on their blog roll of winners. http://foodstoriesblog.com/illuminating-blogger-award/. This is an easy one rules wise at least. 🙂
Thank you, Susan. I’ll take a look this evening.
Right – have a great day!
Mmm Chard! I have to make do with that since I’ve never seen kale here. Can you believe I’ve never made, or eaten a calzone. I’ve always wanted to, but whenever I go to a pizza place, they serve one calzone, filled with the most boring things ever, and compared to the other amazing pizzas… it’s no contest. I should really try my hand at making my own! Sounds wonderful Sharyn – and I love green garlic! The world definitely needs more green garlic!!
Do try, Charles. In some ways they are easier than pizza because you don’t have to grate as much cheese or prep as many toppings. Pizza is one of my favorite foods, especially with a green salad on the side.
This recipe sounds marvelous, except I have an “allergy” to baking anything that requires rolling out dough and lifting it without tearing it. I’ll bet the filling would taste good on top of rice!
I noticed in your response to Celi’s last post that you drink decaf coffee each morning. That interested me because my GYN just told me to cut way back on caffeine, since it stimulates the growth of lumps and bumps where no woman wants lumps and bumps!
I am a morning person, naturally awake and alert as soon as I wake up, so I don’t need caffeine in the morning. Too much coffee can make me jittery, so I started drinking decaf instead years ago. I do sometimes have an espresso drink if I go out to breakfast or am out in the afternoon. I don’t ever drink any kind of coffee on an empty stomach because the acid bothers me. And I drink black tea, British style with milk, in the afternoon. I measure the water and the coffee for my only cup of coffee most days so that it comes out exactly right.
The leftover calzone filling was good in eggs.
After a week of eating almost nothing type of sickness just reading your recipe has reawakened my appetite – thank you…
Sorry to hear you’ve been ill, John. Thanks for stopping by.