Posted on 05/05/2023 1:36:33 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Luckily, your typical Calzone is not nearly as big as that article.
For people like me who like pizza, but dont really know what a Calzone is, let alone an Empanada;
A Calzone resembles a type of Italian Burrito, if one ever existed. This “Italian Burrito” has soft flaky crust as wrapping. The wrap around crust is usually toasted and buttered.
The Panzerotti sounds like an Italian tank built for the German market!
LOL
I ate a lot of calzones at a little Italian restaurant in Grafenwöhr Germany. 40 years later and I still remember that place fondly
Great post, by the way! I like culinary history and one of my side hobbies is resurrecting old recipes. Sometimes they just need a little tweaking and they become something marvelous!
My favorite was a 19th Century Norwegian fruitcake made with molasses and dried currants.
I progressively made tweaks to the recipe and now it makes a very nice spice cake and the fruit is optional...but I like it! Feel free to try it, it’s easy!
Fruit & Spice Cake
2 cups seedless raisins or dried cranberries
2 1/4 cups water
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
2 egss, beaten
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground clove
2 tsp all spice
2 tsp nutmeg (optional because it gives some people heartburn)
3 1/2 cups of flour. (Whole wheat unbleached flour works really well with this recipe.)
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
Combine the raisins, spices, and water and simmer to a light boil and let it simmer for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and add oil, then the sugar, and then the eggs followed by the salt and baking soda. Sift in the flour and stir until smooth.
Pour the mixture into a greased 13x9 glass pan.
Bake at 375F in a regular oven or at 350F in a convection oven for around 35-40 minutes (check it at around 30 minutes).
Where did you find the recipe?
It came out of a handwritten cookbook from 1912 that I found at an estate sale in Cody. It’s very similar to a recipe my grandmother would make.
Her recipe made dense bars and mine makes a cake.
Also, I sometimes top it with a simple lemon sauce when it’s warm or I let it cool completely and dust it with powdered sugar.
Most every restaurant made it with standard pizza dough but one restaurant about 20 miles away was famous for their calzones and made them with a flakier crust than the others. They were my favorite. It was Vecchio's cafe in Polcenigo.
So strombolis weren’t invented on the island of Stromboli? You learn something new every day.
Oh yea. I still have sweet dreams of the calzones I had in Hanau, GE.
Within a week of arriving in Saarbrücken, Germany, where I would spend two semesters at Saarland University in 1971-1972, I had eaten at every Italian restaurant in town--and they were all run by Italians, not East Asians, Middle Easterners, or white guys of Trans-Alpine heritage, as are many Italian restaurants in Los Angeles these days.
However, calzones hadn't yet made it onto their menus. The dish I usually ordered was spaghetti Bolognese.
The first calzone I ever ate was at a pizzeria in Santa Monica, Calif. around 1980. It was called a football sandwich because of its shape.
We are lucky that near my current house there are several small Italian restaurants that taste like someone’s gramma runs the kitchen.
I remember when I lived in SW Florida 2014-2017, most local “Italian” restaurants were owned by Egyptians for some reason. In NY, NJ, and CT, your Italian food is cooked by Salvadorans or Hondurans even if an Italian (from Italy) is overseeing things.
I’ll see your calzone and raise you a panzerotti: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzerotti
I read that much differently the first time... (long day)
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