Kickin’ calzone

This is quite a classic dish, but what’s really nice about making it yourself instead of buying it ready made-pop into the oven, is that you can actually spice it like would like, add or leave out certain things.

I’ll be honest with you the best thing about this pizza I made, is the sauce :$
I went grocery shopping with this great idea but unfortunately the vegetable section of the store was really saddening (and I was out too late to get to the market). So I came home with a packet of plain old white mushrooms, plain old paprika’s and that’s about it.

I wanted to get different types of mushrooms and some really exciting sweet and hot peppers but there was not much choice. Not to mention that the cooked beetroots had a bit of a fruit-fly problem which made me flee that part of the store.
(why, oh why don’t they just chuck the lot out instead of letting it sit there all disgusting and nobody will buy it)

So on with it.

I used

• 250 g mushrooms
• 2 or 3 slices of ham
• a nice handful of grated cheese, I used the 3 cheeses mix (emmental, maasdam, mozerella)
• 1 onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 can of peeled tomatoes
• 1 spoon tomato purée
• a yellow and a red paprika
• half a teaspoon of chilli purée (which is basically chilli-pepper with a bit of vinegar)
• big packet of thinly rolled pizza dough (yes I was being a bit lazy here)
• feta cheese
• basil & oregano

What I did
The sauce: I’ve diced the onion and garlic real thin, put them in a hot pan with some olive oil. Left them to do their thing while I opened up the can of tomatoes and gathered my herbs. Since I’ve got no fresh herbs left, I used the dried ones. When the onions looked glassy I put the tomatoes, herbs, tomato purée and the chilli purée in. Give it a bit of a stir and let it cook for about the time you need to peel and dice all the ingredients for the topping, so the sauce isn’t too watery. Then turn off the fire and let the sauce cool a bit.

Dice the paprika thinly so they’ll have about the same cooking time as the mushrooms. I’ve made thin strips of ham which looked a bit more exciting than cubes.

The pizza: Roll out your dough, put it on a baking tin. Spread a nice layer of your sweet ‘n hot tasting tomato sauce over half of the dough (because we’ll be closing it with the other half). Put your mushrooms, paprika and ham on it. Crumble some feta over it if you like, and the grated cheese. Sprinkle some more basil and oregano over it and then close up the pizza. Sprinkle some olive oil with basil on it and put it in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes @ 180°C.

To be honest I could’ve left out the ham entirely and make this vegetarian. Maybe next time.

With the excess sauce, mushrooms and paprika, I made some `provençaalse saus’ and to put in the freezer. Which is going to be incredible with some fresh made pasta (should get me one of those things to roll out the pasta).
The excess ham is going to serve me to make a macaroni and cheese with broccoli. Which is all nice comfort food for when you’re home late and tired.

*edit @ 2012/03/14*: My brother asked me what I put on my baking tin, since I conveniently forgot to mention. I’ve used the fat-free paper the dough was wrapped in, to put on the bottom of the baking tin. I usually use that kind of layer between all things I bake on such a tin (bread, cookies, pizza’s, …) it makes life easier. They’ve also invented a reusable, silicon version of that, a “baking sheet”. Mom got me one of those, it works fantastically.