Pizza Freak: Meatballs-in-Blankets Pizza Turnovers; Bacon and Egg Pizza; Cable Car

I was glad to come across the recipe for the meatball turnovers. We had put on a party over the summer for my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary, and my husband had originally thought that we would make our own food for the party. While that would have been a great cost-saver, and I love saving, my sisters and I decided it would be too much stress to plan the party, keep it a surprise from our parents, make the food, and try to transport it (secretly) to the party hall. Before we broke the news to him, he had started storing up items to make. One of the items on his menu were meatballs, so I now have a freezer full of bags of meatballs. It was nice to see a recipe using them for something other than barbecue sauce in a crockpot or in a pile of spaghetti.

Meatballs-in-Blankets Pizza Turnovers

Adapted from The Everything Pizza Cookbook by Belinda Hulin

1 cup warm water

2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

1/2 teaspoon sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

3 1/4 cups bread flour

1 tablespoon + 1 3/4 teaspoon olive oil, divided

1 tablespoon minced garlic

1/2 cup jarred pasta sauce

2 1/2 ounces diced tomatoes

1 tablespoon dried basil

Pinch of crushed red pepper

15 ounces ricotta cheese

8 ounces meatballs (I used Simek's turkey meatballs)
4 ounces Romano cheese

4 ounces mozzarella cheese
1 egg

In a saucepan, combine olive oil and garlic. Cook over medium heat, stirring for a couple of minutes. Add the pasta sauce. Puree the tomatoes in a blender until smooth. Add to saucepan with the basil and red pepper. Bring the sauce to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for twenty minutes. Set aside.
In a saucepan, combine 3/4 teaspoon olive oil and the garlic. Cook over medium heat, stirring for a couple of minutes. Add the pasta sauce. Puree the tomatoes in a blender or food processor until smooth. Add to saucepan with the basil and red pepper. Bring the sauce to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for twenty minutes. Allow to cool.
Preheat oven to 500º F. Divide the dough into four pieces. On a floured board, roll or stretch each piece into a nine inch circle. Place the dough circles on a greased baking sheet. Spread one fourth of the sauce over each of the circles, leaving the outer edges of the circles bare. Dollop one fourth of the ricotta (roughly 3.75 ounces) over one half of each of the circles. Press the ricotta down with the back of a spoon to spread it evenly over the half. Distribute 2 ounces of meatballs over the ricotta on each of the circles. Distribute the Romano cheese evenly over the meatballs. Distribute the mozzarella evenly over the Romano. Fold the circles in half over the toppings and press to seal, wetting the edges with water, if necessary to get the dough to stick together. With a sharp knife, cut slits in the tops for ventilation. Beat the egg and 1 teaspoon of olive oil together. Brush the tops of each calzone with the egg wash. Bake for fifteen minutes or until dough becomes firm and golden. Let stand a few minutes before serving.

The original recipe in the book called for "18 small meatballs". Well, I only had one size, and I wasn't sure whether they were small or medium. They definitely weren't large, in my book. I used 18 of them, which turned out to be eight ounces. Now, I can see dividing 8 ounces over four dough circles, but how do you distribute 18 meatballs evenly over four pizzas. In hindsight, I should have cut them in half and put nine halves in each calzone. the thought had occurred to me at the time, but I wanted whole meatballs in my blankets.
My dough, thankfully, rose quite a bit. This is sometimes an issue in my house in the winter, because most days I tend to keep the heat set at 65º when I am home alone. Today wasn't one of those days.

I did, however, forget to cover the dough while it was rising, so there was a little crustiness to the outside of my dough ball. It rolled out just fine, though, and I figured if I put the dry parts on the inside of the calzone, it would not be noticed or adversely affect the finished dish. The sauce covered it up nicely (if a little scarcely).

I had an issue with the ricotta again. I found it very difficult to get even coverage of the ricotta without pushing the tomato sauce out of the way. I settled for dropping spoonsful of the cheese over the half and pressing each dollop down with the back of a spoon to minimize tomato relocation.

I was following along the recipe in the book, when I noticed that the next instruction was to put the lobster over the ricotta. Lobster??? There wasn't any lobster listed in the ingredient list. I read further, it instructed me to distribute the pancetta and minced green onion over the top of it. Those weren't in there either! Obviously, the writer just copied the recipe over from the bacon and lobster calzones (see November 29, 2012), and the editors never caught it. That kind of stuff always amazes me. Does that person still have a job? I would like to take it from them!
Since there were only a few ingredients left on the list, it was pretty self explanatory, but I would never know how they expected me to divide up those 18 meatballs. I decided to keep them whole, giving us two calzones with 4 meatballs each and two calzones with 5 meatballs each, and I hoped I would a piece from the 5 meatball version.

As seems to be the case with my "rustic" dough circles, I had a difficult time sealing them up. Not only were they suffering from what Jeff calls "Burrito Blow-Out", because there were too many ingredients for the size of the circle, but they were also not quite circular, so the edges didn't match up nicely. One would think that after making pizzas every week for the last seventeen years I would have mastered both of these techniques. After some brief struggling, I did get them closed. I gave them their egg wash and cut slits in them for venting, and set them aside while I worked on the other recipe for the evening.

Once again, I found myself making breakfast for dinner. Bacon and Egg Pizza. This recipe I had to modify significantly. It was originally supposed to be one ten inch pizza with one egg on it. That just wasn't going to work for a crowd of seven or more people. I don't think that would even work for two people. I decided that I was going to use the same amount of crust, cheese, and tomatoes, but that I was going to make 5 little pizzas - one for each adult - and each pizza was going to have an egg. That way, those who wanted to try the pizza wouldn't miss out on the egg, and I could make one specially for Pam with a scrambled egg instead of a whole egg.

Bacon and Egg Pizza

Adapted from All the Best Pizzas by Joie Warner

½ cup + 1 tablespoon warm water

1¼ teaspoon active dry yeast

¼ teaspoon sugar

1¼ cup bread flour

¼ teaspoon salt

1 ounce cooked and crumbled bacon

6 ounces provolone cheese

3 ounces of tomatoes, seeded and diced
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

1 ounce Romano cheese

Combine the yeast, water, and sugar in a bowl and set aside for at least five minutes. Stir the salt and flour together in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a dough hook. Add the yeast mixture and stir on a low speed until the mixture forms a ball around the hook. Continue mixing a little longer until the dough becomes smooth and elastic. Let rest for an hour in a greased bowl in a warm, dry place.
Preheat the oven to 500º F. Divide the dough into five pieces. On a cornmeal dusted board, roll or stretch each piece into a three inch circles. Make sure that each circle is thicker on the outside edge than in the middle, rolling up the edge a little to form a lip all the way around. Place the dough circles on a greased baking sheet (or a baking sheet lined with parchment paper). Distribute one-fifth of the provolone cheese over each of the circles, with more cheese around the outside edge than in the middle, forming a "nest" for the egg. Break the egg into the center of the circle, trying very carefully not to break the yolk. Carefully top with the bacon and the tomatoes. Lightly salt the egg and crack a little pepper over each one. Sprinkle with Romano cheese. Bake for 5-10 minutes or until egg is almost set (it will set up a little more while resting). Rest for a couple of minutes and serve.

After carefully rolling out the dough, I had noticed that there was one dough circle that was a little bit larger than the rest. I decided that would be the one for the scrambled egg, since I could make a thicker edge with that one to (hopefully) keep the egg from running out onto the . I had all of my provolone distributed and was ready to add the egg. I carefully cracked an egg into a bowl to minimize the risk of getting shells on the pizza. I tipped the bowl over one of the dough circles, and as it slid onto the cheese, the yolk broke open. After some carefully chosen expletives, I decided this one was going to be the scrambled one, and hopefully no more yolks would break. I stirred it up with a fork as well as I could while it was still on top of the crust, trying not to incorporate too much of the cheese into the scramble.
Three out of the remaining four were good, whole eggs. One of them, however, broke while I was cracking it into the bowl. I was thankful for that, because I really wanted beautiful baked eggs with their yolks in tact.
Jennifer and Roger arrived with their troupe and Pam, and Jeff came shortly thereafter. The Liggetts had brought a Papa Murphy's pizza to add to the meal. I think it may have been the same order we had last week from Paul and Leslie. It was a hit then, so I had no doubt it would be again.

I started mixing our drinks while the pizzas were in the oven. I was trying hard to do it while Pam wasn't watching, because the recipe called for (gasp!) a raw egg white!

Cable Car

2 measures spiced rum

1 measure triple sec

½ measure freshly squeezed lemon juice

¼ measure agave syrup

½ fresh egg white

Vigorously shake all ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled martini glass.

I shook up all of the ingredients and tried to pour it equally into the three cocktail glasses. When I got to the third, one big lump of slimy egg white plopped out of the shaker and into the glass. Ew! Hoping no one was looking, I quickly poured all of the drinks back into the shaker and reshook the ingredients as vigorously as I could. I wanted to make sure that the second time around the egg would break up and froth up, and I hoped no one would notice the reshaking (whether your ovaphobic or not, slimy globs of egg in your drink is extremely unappetizing!). I was successful in the frothing, but I was caught. Jennifer saw me pour the slime back into the shaker and asked if that was an egg white. "Yes," I murmured under my breath, "but don't say anything."

Egg whites get a bad rap. Part of that is their own fault for being so jiggly, I think. The jiggliness really does put me off, but I am trying to get over it. The risk of salmonella is very minimal these days, and the citric acid and the alcohol will kill most of the bacteria that would cause such a thing, anyway. The benefit of the egg white is the froth. It froths a drink up very effectively (if agitated enough), which makes it much more attractive and fun. It adds a nice richness and creaminess to the drink, too (again, only if you shake up the whites enough).

If Pam had heard us whispering about egg whites, she didn't seem to care. She took her drink and sipped it up. Jennifer mentioned that she thought the drink tasted a bit like egg nog. I shot her a steely gaze. It did, though. The spice from the rum with the creaminess and frothiness of the egg white had a nog-esque aura about it. The lemon juice kept it light, though, and it was so rich as to make us refuse another serving

The pizzas were ready in no time, and they looked great. I pulled the egg pizzas out a little before the jiggliness of the whites had worn off. I didn't want to overdo the yolks like I did with the asparagus egg pizza. My hope was that the whites would completely set while I was slicing the pie and serving it up. I didn't have to worry about Pam's, though, since I had scrambled hers. The only problem with her serving was that the egg had escaped the crust barrier and oozed all over my sheet pan.

The egg pizzas were delicious! My whites hadn't completely set up as I had hoped, but enough to get the quiver out of it. The combination of the creamy egg yolks and the cheese with the slight crunch and smokiness of the bacon was dreamy. The tomatoes kept everything in check and reduced the richness overload. These were complete delicious breakfasts in cute little pizza packages!

The calzones, despite my added egg wash didn't golden up as well as I had hoped. I think on the next run (if there is one), I will try more oil or maybe go back to the milk variation of the wash. More research must be done.

The flavor was fantastic. Big, fat meatballs were nestled in a bed of ricotta and cheese with just a hint of the tomato sauce that lay underneath. While I enjoyed the whole meatballs, I did wish that I had cut them in half before assembling the calzones, because I would have liked to enjoy the flavor of the meat with every bite, not just the couple of bites that had meatballs in them.

Jonah, my nephew, actually ventured to try the meatball calzone (he is thirteen and a bit locked into the traditional pizza mentality). He gave it rave reviews and had several pieces during the course of the evening.

All of the pizzas were hits, and we barely had any leftovers. There were a few "resized" pieces of calzones, where someone had cut a little of the edges off to sneak into their mouths, because they were too full to have a whole piece and only two pieces of the "cowboy" left. I deem that a success.

We ladies had accidentally polished off our drinks halfway through dinner and had run out of triple sec. Also, the jig (ha ha) was up on the egg whites. We told Pam (after she drank it and declared it tasty) that there were egg whites in the drink. I figured she wasn't up to a third round of those at this point, and I was over cracking and separating eggs for the evening. We switched it up and made something else with what we had on hand to round out our evening.