Chicken Calzones

I wanted to do some kinda comfort food for dinner tonight but wasn't sure what to make. We had chicken in the freezer and barely veggies in the fridge, but I found a neat looking calzone recipe, and altered it to suite the ingredients I had. 

DOUGH:

1 pkg. active dry yeast (or 2 1/4 tsp.)

1 cup warm water (105-115 degrees)

1 T. sugar

2 T. olive oil

1 tsp. salt

3 1/4 cups flour

Dissolve yeast in warm water until foamy, about 10 minutes.  Stir in sugar, oil, salt, and 1 cup flour.  Beat until smooth. (I do this in my Kitchen Aid Mixer.)  Mix in remaining flour to make dough easy to handle.  Turn onto lightly floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. (I let my Kitchen Aid do the kneading for me....same amount of time on speed 2).  Place in a greased bowl; turn greased side up.  Cover and let rise in a warm place until almost double, about 30 minutes.

I followed the recipe for dough but doubled it to make extra. Instead of following the BBQ part of the recipe I made a potato filling with: 

10 Potato's 1/2 red 1/2 yellow

1 Large onion

4 Cheese strings

1 Brocoli

Next I followed this red sauce recipe's direction except I found I didn't have a few ingredients so I altered this part also. 

Basic Red Sauce:

2 teaspoons olive oil

1/2 chopped yellow onion

1/2 teaspoon minced garlic

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon dried basil

1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper 

16 ounces whole peeled tomatoes, broken into pieces, and their juices

16 ounces tomato sauce

4 teaspoons tomato paste

2/3 cup water

1/2 teaspoon sugar

In a medium pot, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onions, garlic, salt, basil, oregano, and pepper, and cook, stirring, until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, water, and sugar and stir well. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Lower the heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, until thickened and fragrant, 25 to 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Remove from the heat and keep warm until ready to use.

Yield: 3 cups

I didn't have oregano, black pepper, or olive oil. I substituted olive oil for vegetable oil and made the sauce exactly to the recipe above. 

Instructions: 

1. I put the chicken in the oven and cooked it

2. while the chicken was cooking, I boiled my yellow and red potato's and chopped up the onion and broccoli. The recipe calls for cheese but other than string cheese I didn't have any so i diced up the string cheese.

3. After the potato's were done I chopped them into smaller pieces and since I don't have a potato masher I improvised with a beater from my kitchen aid. After mashing the potato's I added milk and butter to them and continued until they were smooth. 

4. I added the chopped up broccoli, cheese, and 1/2 the onions to the mashed potato's and stirred it all together. 

5. I used the dough recipe above and mixed it together and set aside. 

6. I mixed together the marinara sauce in a small sauce pan.

7. By this time my chicken was finished cooking and so I diced and shredded my chicken into small bits. 

8. Separating the dough into 7 small balls I flatten each out into round disks on a large baking sheet and added two scopes of the potato mixture, then put as much shredded chicken on top as looked like would fit, and afterward added two teaspoons of marinara sauce. Folding the other half of the dough disk I pushed the edges together with a fork and continued this formula. 

9. Once the baking sheet was full, they were baked at 375 degrees for 25 minutes until golden brown.

These turned out to be a tasty treat! and now I'm glad I made extra because now I have a few freezer dinners for when my disorder causes me to be bedridden :)

The original recipe was found here: http://recipeaholic.blogspot.com/2010/03/bbq-chicken-calzones.html 

~ElysiaB

The site with the original recipe is: http://recipeaholic.blogspot.com/2010/03/bbq-chicken-calzones.html