Sausage & Pepper Calzone

May 11-13 - still in Costa Rica

This is the final and likely the favorite freezer meal I made for the Boy to have while I was out of town.  It's a pretty basic recipe that can be tweaked with a wide variety of fillings, I make homemade dough but it works just as well with store bought.  I made some earlier in the challenge using more ricotta, some asiago, fried eggplant and chorizo. Anything you think will be good on a pizza will absolutely work on a calzone.  Have fun and play with it!


I'll be back on Wednesday with live posts, hopefully full of inspiration from my time spent in LA, Boulder & Costa Rica.

Sausage, Pepper & Onion Calzone
makes 2 large or 4 small calzones

2 hot Italian sausages - casing removed

1/2 red bell pepper - seeded and deveined and thinly sliced
1 small onion - thinly sliced
2 lbs pizza dough - I used ABin5 Olive oil Dough and half the recipe
3/4 cup ricotta cheese
1 cup grated mozzarella cheese
a few Tbsps of your favorite spaghetti sauce
extra virgin olive oil

1.  Heat a medium skillet over medium high heat.  Ad a bit of olive oil and when heated add the sausage, which was removed from it's casing.  Saute the pieces of sausage until browned.  Remove to a bowl and reserve in a bowl.
2.  Add some more oil to the pan and heat it over medium heat.  Add in the onions and let saute until soft and translucent, then in the red pepper slices.  Saute until all of the vegetables are cooked through and slightly caramelized. Remove to a bowl and reserve.
3.  Dive the dough into 2 or 4 pieces (a large calzone will feed 2-3 a small 1-2), I made 2 large.  Roll out each piece of dough into a 10-12 inch round. Divide the ricotta, mozzarella, sausage, peppers & onions among each calzone, spreading half of each dough circle with ricotta, a sprinkling of mozzarella, meat & veg and top with the remaining mozzarella and some sauce.
4. Carefully fold the rest of the dough over and fold up the edges to seal.  Rub with olive oil and bake in 450F oven, or freeze until ready to use.  A fresh calzone will bake in 10-15 minutes, frozen about 20.