It seems only fitting to start my first entry about food with my earliest memory of cooking on my own. I’m sure there had been other meals before this particular one, and I remember quite vividly making ham and cheese sandwiches as a four year old and being so, so proud. But sandwich making isn’t really cooking, is it? It’s more like food assembling. And so my earliest memory of cooking is from a Winter Saturday when I decided to make a calzone.
A calzone doesn’t sound too elegant, and I don’t know why I chose to make it since I’m sure I had never had a calzone, nor do I think I’ve had one since. I must have been about thirteen or fourteen, which means I made it around the time I became a vegetarian. I recently found the cookbook that I discovered the recipe in, and it is by no means the easiest in the book. But it is loaded, jam-packed, with vegetables. And I believe this is the answer to why I chose to make a calzone. My adolescent self was doing me, the twenty-four year old Emily, a favour by loading up with veggies. I still believe that no matter how much bread you eat, as long as there are vegetables on the bread, it is healthy. Bruschetta? Eat up.
My calzone making was a pretty spur-of-the-moment thing, but luckily everything I needed was in the kitchen. I started to make the dough just before lunch time, probably around noon, and I think it was my intention to eat it for lunch, as I just looked up the recipe and found it in the ‘Mid-week Meals’ section, just after ‘Light Lunches.’ This strikes me now as an inappropriate chapter for the calzone, since the dough alone needs an hour to rise after it has been kneaded. And I can say for certain that I did not read the whole recipe through before I started to make it - I still sometimes forget to do so!
So I started just before lunch, and I cooked up until dinnertime. I had the kitchen to myself the whole day, which was unusual because it was winter, cold and dark outside, which usually meant that my parents would be reading in the family room, and so constantly in and out of the kitchen to make tea. But it was quiet as could be. No music, no chatter, just pure calzone concentration. I must have spent hours perfecting the dough, and another hour cutting vegetables, another hour assembling the thing. When I first started baking I had a fear of leaving things by themselves in the oven. This wasn’t a safety caution because I still leave candles aflame when I leave the apartment. I don’t know why I couldn’t leave the kitchen, but I do know that I was not helping its progress by hanging around, because I was constantly opening the oven to check how things were coming along. This was before I discovered the oven light.
The calzone was cooked by dinnertime. I set myself a place at the table, plated the calzone, and sat down to enjoy. I’ve always had a hard time sharing good food, and this was not an exception. The recipe says it makes four calzones, but I decided to make one big giant calzone. Yes, I ate four servings worth of calzone that day, and they were all delicious.
I had to cut the calzone in half because I hadn’t rolled the dough very well, and the edges and corners of the calzone were a little too thick. Keep in mind, this was in my early teens, when love of all things bready is at its height, so this calzone must have been THICK. Picture this: a heaping block of dough on your plate, you cut into the dough with your knife and split it into two pieces, and where what was once just yellowy brown dullness, there became this magnificent rainbow. When I say rainbow, I really mean rainbow: red, green, and yellow, brown, and white. These vegetables were shining, I swear. This was not merely the day that I made a calzone. This was the day I discovered the glory of vegetables.
This success prompted me to attempt a few more kitchen adventures in the following weeks, which were all disasters. I remember a certain carrot salad dessert, a popular Indian dish, but I got the measurements wrong and it really became a carrot soup. And so the calzone is the hero of this story and here it is:
From Linda Fraser’s Simply Vegetarian
Ingredients:
4 cups flour
Pinch of salt
1 fast-rising dry yeast
About 1½ cups warm water
For the filling:
1 tsp olive oil
1 medium red onion, thinly sliced
3 medium zucchini, about 12oz total weight, thinly sliced
2 large tomatoes, diced
1 cup mozzarella cheese, diced
1 tbsp fresh oregano
Skim milk, to glaze
Salt and pepper
To make the dough, sift the flour and salt into a bowl and stir in the yeast. Stir in just enough warm water to mix to a soft dough.
Knead for 5 minutes until smooth. Cover and leave in a warm place for a bout 1 hour, or until doubled in size.
Meanwhile, to make the filling, heat the oil and sauté the red onion and zucchini for 3-4 minutes. Remove from heat and add the tomatoes, cheese, oregano, and salt and pepper to taste.
Pre-heat oven to 425 F. Knead the dough lightly and divide into four. Roll out each piece of dough on a lightly floured surface to a 8in round, and place a quarter of the filling on one half of each round.
Brush the edges with milk and fold to enclose the filling. Press firmly to enclose. Brush with milk.
Bake on an oiled baking sheet for 15-20 minutes. Serve.
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