Cabbage

I decided this week the vegetable should be cabbage. Oddly enough I have never really had cabbage. I have tried coleslaw and have always hated it so that was not an option. And I guess I have had it lo mein noodles but that didn’t seem to count. Then I was flipping thru the magazine, Vegetarian Times, and came across a recipe for a Cabbage Calzone. That just seemed like a perfect solution. But I am not going to lie, this recipe shouldn’t really count either. Once it was all said and done I didn’t even know there was cabbage in the calzone. But I refuse to just cook it and eat it. Maybe I will try again. I did find another recipe for a cabbage and chard soup. That could work.


But I will also say that this recipe took me almost two hours to complete. I honestly have no idea why it took so long. It really wasn’t hard. The basic procedure is to chop the ingredients up, throw them in a pot and cook them for a little while. Then put them in the dough and throw it in the oven. And that’s it. I guess most of my time was spent reading the recipe a million times, rolling out the dough by hand and cutting it and then the time it took to cook in the oven. But the end result was very good and I didn’t even miss the meat. Which is weird. All the calzones I have ever had have been full of cheese and pepperoni with the marinara on the side. This calzone has no cheese, no meat at all and the tomatoey part on the inside. I debated most of the day about going to the store to buy some pepperoni but in the end I decided against it. The potatoes and mushrooms more than made up for that texture and filling that I needed.

I have listed the original ingredients below. I made a few changes to this for my version. I did not use red wine vinegar because I did not have any red wine vinegar. I also did not use the parsley or eggs. I added baby portabella mushrooms and a little sprinkling of Cabot 75% reduced cheese and a little parmesan. I honestly didn’t know it was in the calzone after it had been cooked so there really wasn’t a point in that. And finally I made my own dough rather than buying the prepackaged kind because I wanted it to be whole wheat. I have included the recipe for that below as well.


Cabbage Calzone

4 oz small red potatoes, cut into ½ inch pieces (3/4 cup)
¼ head green cabbage, cored and sliced into ½ inch thick ribbons (2 cups)
1 Tbs. olive oil, plus a little more for brushing dough
1 small onion finely diced (1 cup)
4 cloves of garlic, minced (4tsp.)
1 ½ tsp dried oregano
1 15oz can chopped tomatoes
8 pitted Kalamta olives, coarsely chopped
2 tsp. red wine vinegar
3 hard boiled eggs, each cut into 8 slices
3 Tbs. chopped fresh parsley
1 16 oz pkg. prepared pizza dough

1. Bring large pot of salted water to a boil. Add potatoes, and cook 8 to 10 minutes, or until just tender. Remove the plate with the slotted spoon. Add cabbage to pot, and cook 3 to 4 minutes, or until just softened. Drain, and set aside.
2. Heat oil in larger skillet over medium heat. Add onion, and cook 5 minutes, or until soft and translucent. Add garlic and oregano, and cook 1 minute. Add tomatoes, and simmer 5 minutes, or until most of the liquid has reduced. Add olives and vinegar, and cook 3 minutes more. Remove from heat, and gently stir in eggs, parsley, potatoes, and cabbage: season with salt and pepper if desired. Remove from heat and cool.
3. Preheat oven to 425F. Coat baking sheet with cooking spray. Divide dough into 8 pieces, and roll each into 8-inch diameter circle. Place ½ cup filling on bottom half of each circle, leaving ¾ inch border around edge. Fold dough over filling and pinch ends together to seal. Repeat with remaining dough pieces. Cut 3 small slits in top of calzone. Transfer to prepared baking sheet, and crush with oil. Bake 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown.

Makes 8 servings. (I halved everything and made enough filling for just 4 servings)

Whole Wheat Dough Ingredients
· 7 grams Agave Nector
· 3/4 cups warm water
· 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
· 1 ¾ teaspoon olive oil
· 1/2 teaspoon salt
· 2 cups whole wheat flour

This list is for a one pound bread machine. I simply put it all in the order that my bread machine calls for and put it on the dough setting. Once it was complete I put the dough into a bowl lined with olive oil while I finished chopping all the other stuff for the calzone. Then I rolled it out and used a small plate(which I made sure was 8 inches) to cut out the circles. I probably could have gotten 3 or 4 circles but I just went with two. One of them was perfect and the other was just a little too thin but it sill worked.

So once that was rolled out I put the filling on them and folded it over and threw it in the oven. They came out better than I hoped and were really good. I ate the messy one and saved the better one for Ryan. However, he really doesn’t like tomato in any form other than hidden in a pizza or ketchup so he did not like the fact that the inside had the chopped tomatoes. I am going to end up eating that one too.