Dinner in Parker Ford: Crescent Calzones

The Date: 23 January 2012

The Occasion: I thought Husband would like these and they looked like a fun challenge.

The Recipe: From a birthday gift, a Pillsbury Cookbook from Mom.

How it Went:
We both really liked these! The instructions weren't quite detailed enough for me, in terms of how you closed and sealed up the calzones, but I figured it out. I thought these looked mighty small and was worried about 4 of them being enough. But we each had just one! The other two were lunches for the next day. I'd definitely make these again.

What You Need:
sausage
bell pepper
onion
Italian seasoning
crescent rolls
tomato sauce
mozzerella or Italian blend shredded cheese
pepperoni
egg

Your Turn:
Preheat the oven to 375 and spray a cookie sheet with PAM. Set aside.

Slice two sweet Italian sausage links down the side and peel off the casing. Break up the sausage meat and cook it in a medium skillet with 1 bell pepper, chopped (any color) and 1/2 a yellow onion, chopped. Sprinkle with Italian seasoning. Cook until meat is no longer pink, stirring occasionally to break up sausage.

I bought a lb of the sweet Italian sausage links which was 5 links. The recipe asked for a 1/2 lb, but the two links were actually more than enough! I used a yellow bell pepper because it's what I had, but green would be good too, if not better. You could put mushrooms in also, if you like that.

On greased cookie sheet, open one 8 oz package of crescent rolls. Unroll the dough and separate it into four 7" x 4" rectangles. (Each rectangle will be made of two triangles. Press together at the seam to seal.)

Spread about 1 T of tomato sauce (4 T tomato sauce in total) on each rectangle. Then top each with about 2 T shredded mozzarella or Italian blend cheese (1/2 C shredded Italian cheese in total).

These could have had a bit more cheese on them.

On each rectangle, place a few pepperoni slices. I had room for three on each. Then top half of each rectangle with a spoonful of the sausage/onion/pepper mixture. Not too much, or you'll never get the calzone to close!

This is actually a little too much filling. You have to fold the calzones in half next, so don't pack it too full!

Now, fold half of the calzone over onto the part with the filling. Seal the edges together with a fork. You might need to do some extra pressing on the seam too. Mine were splitting open. Poke some holes in the top with a fork too.

Beat one egg with a fork. Brush egg on top of each calzone and sprinkle the top with some Italian seasoning.