Friday Feast: Leftover Calzone

Picture this: it’s lunch after church. You’ve done a beautiful job planning out the week of meals, but you’re hungry, it’s Sunday, and your budget doesn’t allow a dinner out. You have a bunch of little stuff left but not enough to have a meal of leftovers. Why not take some of that to make a calzone?

On this past Sunday lunch, we found ourselves in that exact predicament. We had a little bit of spinach left from my week of salads, a half eaten bag of mozzarella cheese, a Tupperware of hot sausage that we used for omelets, and mushrooms. And, Publix was having a sale on both pizza dough and tomato sauce. We were a little tired of pizzas, so what’s the next best thing? Calzones.

Leftover Calzone

Ingredients

for the calzone…

pizza dough

middle toppings (We used spinach, mushrooms, sausage and mozzarella. Other good alternatives include feta cheese, ricotta, pepperoni, peppers, tomatoes, chicken, etc. Get creative!)

oil to brush over the top

for the sauce…

can of tomato sauce

garlic

parsley

EVOO

Tabasco

• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
• Roll the pizza dough out to make a flat surface. (Note: pizza dough is best at room temperature and is better when left out for an hour prior to rolling out.) Cut the pizza dough into quarters.
• In a bowl, mix your middle toppings together. Drop your toppings together on top of each quarter (no need to cook the spinach or mushrooms… that’ll happen in the oven!).
• Fold one edge of the dough over the toppings and pinch the edges together.  It’ll be tight, but no biggie! Everything will come out great in the end.
• Rub EVOO on the top of each calzone and place on a greased cookie sheet.
• Place in the oven for about 15 minutes. (I have a tendency to under-cook dough, so I ended up putting mine in for 20 minutes, which was also fine.)
• While the calzones are cooking, over low heat, warm the sauce ingredients over the stove.

So yummy! And, as JD can attest, they are also great as leftovers a day later.