Spinach Artichoke Calzones

Last week, my Mom posted a comment saying, “You should rename the blog ‘fueling my Navy pilot one snack at a time’.” Ouch. Harsh, Mom, harsh. It’s true, I’ve been making lots of snacks and sweets. I’ve been in kind of a rut for new dinner ideas.

I took the comment as a challenge, and dove into my cookbooks head first.

Ok, I admit this is not a new dinner idea. It’s actually a tried and true recipe of mine, that I’ve made several times before. But never for Nick, and never for the blog! So it worked. 🙂

This recipe came from my Girls’ Night dinner days in Boston. With one vegetarian and one slightly picky pal in the group, dinner ideas were a bit of a challenge. But these calzones fit the bill, and everyone loved them. I haven’t had a complaint any of the times I’ve made them since.

I’ve always made these with Pillsbury pizza dough in a tube, but since I discovered such an easy homemade dough recipe, I decided to try that out! It worked just fine, but required a little extra cooking time.

Spinach Artichoke Calzones

(from Rachel Ray)

• 2 cups part-skim ricotta
• few pinches ground nutmeg
• few grinds black pepper
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan
• 1 (10 oz) package frozen spinach, defrosted and squeezed dry
• 1 (15 oz) can artichoke hearts, drained and roughly chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 batch homemade pizza dough (or 2 tubes Pillsbury pizza dough)
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella
• marinara sauce, for dipping

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Combine first 7 ingredients in a bowl.

Roll out dough into 4 equal circles (or squares, if using tubes). Spread 1/4 of the filling onto half the surface of each piece of dough.

Sprinkle 1/4 cup mozzarella on top.

Fold dough over top of filling and pinch edges firmly to seal. Place calzones on 2 parchment or silpat lined baking sheets.

Bake about 15 min for tube dough or 20 for homemade, until golden brown.

Serve calzones with warm marinara sauce for dipping.