What’s Cooking: Chicken Calzones
I love reading Rachel’s recipes of the week, and with all people who tried the make-ahead burritos, I figured I’d post a few more. Here goes my first! Forgive my lack of measurements–I tried.
I found this chicken calzone recipe online and made a few minor modifications. This is enough to make two, large calzones–enough for a snack for me, dinner for 2, and lunch again the next day.
Chicken Calzones
double batch of pizza dough from your bread machine, enough for 2 pizzas (or 2 packages of refrigerated dough)
1/4 cup or more basil pesto (I make tons of this in the summer from our basil plants and freeze it for use all year)
4-6 sun-dried tomato halves, chopped (get the tomatoes that are packed in oil, just dab the oil off with a towel, this is less than 1/4 of a small jar)
about 3/4 cup ricotta cheese
about 2 cups mozzarella cheese
1.5-2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts cut up into bite size pieces
olive oil
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cook chicken on stove in olive oil with some italian seasoning and a little minced garlic. Roll out pizza dough into two large circles or rectangles (one for each batch of dough), thin like you would a pizza. Layer pesto, chopped sun-dried tomatoes, and cooked chicken on one half of the dough. Drop ricotta cheese by tablespoons all around, evenly distributing. I put about 6-8 spoonfuls on each calzone. Sprinkle with mozzarella.
Lift one ege of dough and stretch over the filing to form a half moon (or smaller rectangle). Press edges to seal. Prick the tops with a fork to allow steam to escape. Brush tops with a little olive oil. Bake in oven for about 12-15 minutes or until the top is golden brown. Be sure to take it out and lift up the calzone with a spatula to make sure the bottom isn’t doughy. If it is, bake for about four more minutes and check again. Cut in half. Serve with marinara sauce if you desire, but I don’t think it needs it.
February 12th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
MMMM! I hadn’t thought of making calzones!!! You can pack those babies with all kinds of healthy goodies. Thanks for the idea and the recipe!
February 12th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
This sounds really good! Where do you get your cheese from? Just curious. I’m a cheese fanatic. We bought some feta and other stuff from Sand Creek Farm (raw milk dairy). It is outstanding, but I want some good ole’ mozzarella too!
February 14th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Just wanted to say we make calzones ALL the time (you can hide lots of good stuff in there!)….and I had the idea one day to use some of the pre-packaged crescent rolls that were about to go bad in a few days. Sooo…if you don’t have pizza dough, it works really well too! And mighty tasty (that ‘croissant’ flavor). Instead of rolling them like the package tells you to, you leave them in pairs and int he shape of a square, then fill ‘em up, and crease the edges together. YUMMY!
February 14th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Hey Rachel, can I come eat lunch at your house? It’s snowing here. Check out this quinoa recipe on another friend’s blog.
http://busyasbees.blogspot.com
February 18th, 2008 at 10:21 am
i love calzones!!! however, i was laughing hard when i told chris about this blog… you lost me at “put the bread in your bread maker…” I’m doing good to cook the basics right now. Maybe in a few years I’ll graduate to breadmaker. You are such a great homemaker!! YOu always have been.
February 26th, 2008 at 9:21 am
We had chicken calzones for dinner last night, and they were a HUGE hit! I even snuck some spinach in there:)