Calzones are easy to prepare at home. While having a pizza or bread stone certainly helps to make a crisp crust, you can bake calzones on a heavy sheet pan with great results.
Start with the best pizza dough you can find, or make some yourself.
Using approximately 6 ounces of dough per calzone results in a good shape and serving size; since the vast majority of pizza shops use 12-ounce balls of dough per pizza, it's also an easy weight to find. Making your own dough can be rewarding, but it's simpler to buy some from a local pizza place or market for a few dollars.
Flatten out the half-ball of dough into a rough oval. It's more important that the dough be stretched to an even thickness than be a uniform shape, since you are going to fold it over and crimp the edges to seal it.
Start your calzones off with a base layer of cheese; fresh ricotta is shown here. The cheese makes a good bed for the rest of the ingredients.
Distribute the calzone fillings of your choice evenly over the cheese, avoiding the urge to overstuff. The calzone will puff up during baking and a large mound of ingredients could cause the dough to split and break. Make sure to leave an appropriate border around the edge for crimping -- about 1 1/2-inches of untopped dough.
Fold, pull and gently stretch the top of the dough oval to cover the ingredients. Lightly press the edges together and prepare to crimp. A few dabs of water may help if your dough feels dry to the touch.
Start to crimp from one edge, gently rolling the dough over your finger and pressing in firmly. The dough will adhere to itself and create a decorative finish as you crimp around the edge.
Not only does the finished edge look nice, but it's firmly closed around the filling and will keep the calzone together as it rises and bakes.
Cutting a series of small vents into the top of the calzone will let steam from the filling to escape, preventing an explosion in your preheated 500F oven.
A light sprinkling of coarse cornmeal helps prevent the calzone from sticking to the pizza peel and baking stone as well as lending a slight crunch to the crust. If you do not have a baking stone, a preheated baking sheet covered with parchment paper works well to create a nice crust on calzones and pizzas.
Wait a few minutes for your baked calzones to cool down and serve with a side of tomato sauce if you'd like.
Agnolotti ("priest hats") are stuffed, fresh pasta from the Piedmont region. Agnolotti are traditionally made by folding small, thinly rolled rounds of pasta dough over fillings into a half-moon (or rectangular) shape, and crimping the edges to seal.
Italian food historians say that the differences between agnolotti and its close cousin ravioli were once more marked. Agnolotti, made in the richer, carnivorous northern regions of Italy, were stuffed with meat; the poorer central and coastal regions stuffed their ravioli with cheese, fish and vegetables.
But the lines have blurred since World War II, and like ravioli, agnolotti may be filled with cheese, meat or vegetables, and spices (particularly nutmeg). In Turin, every cook has their own version, and fillings often depend on what leftover ingredients -- braised beef, roast pork, calves brains, veal -- the cook has on hand. Agnolotti can be gently poached, pan-fried in butter, added to broth to make soup, or served with a sauce.
Like chocolate, cocoa powder is made from the pod-covered cocoa beans of the cacao tree.
Cocoa powder is produced from a dried paste called chocolate liquor that is left after 3/4 of the cocoa butter is extracted from fermented, dried, roasted and cracked cocoa nibs. Hardened chocolate liquor is ground into unsweetened cocoa powder, which can be used to make hot chocolate or in baked goods.
Dutch cocoa is treated to neutralize its natural acidity and has a rich chocolate brown color.
Nori is a Japanese word for edible seaweed that is shredded and dried into sheets, in a process similar to making paper. It is usually toasted.
A rich source of protein, vitamins, calcium, iron and other minerals, nori is produced in Japan, Korea and China and is most commonly used as a wrapper for sushi. The seaweed is crunchy when dry but quickly becomes soggy once it comes into contact with damp sushi rice. Nori can also be cut up into fine strips and added to miso soup or noodle dishes.
Pâte sucrée is the French term for a sweet short crust pastry used to make tarts. It's made with flour, salt, sugar, egg, butter and can include orange flower water. Pâte sucrée is similar to pâte brisée, though it has more calories due to the addition of sugar and is slightly less fragile.
