Hot & Cheesy

One kid. Last night we got one freaking kid who showed up asking for candy. He didn’t even say, “Trick or treat.” But he was wearing some kind of red ninja outfit. Now my kids each have their own bagful of candy, and I’ve got a bowl with an unconscionable number of Twizzlers and Twix.

Based on last night’s twitter chatter, it seems like I’m not alone in buying way too much candy for kids that never show up. The candy companies must be laughing all the way to the bank.

But I’m not going to linger in the past.

Well, maybe I am. But I’m going back a bit farther in the past than just last night. Because it wasn’t so long ago that Wendalicious commented on my post about pepperoni. She wrote, “I am also not a fan of pepperoni, though I do admit to enjoying some inside a calzone. I don’t think I want to know how you feel about calzone.”

She didn’t use a question mark, so the comment didn’t get included in the last Ask the Profussor. But Wendy darling, if you didn’t want to know, you never should have brought it up.

Actually, I love calzones.

I do however wonder if I would love calzones if it wasn’t for my mother. When I was a young child living in Brooklyn Heights, my mom and I would take excursions into the city. Part of the day’s activities would be lunch. And sometimes lunch was a calzone at a grimy pizza counter somewhere in the city.

It’s actually impossible for me to think of calzones without a mental picture popping into my head of a certain NYC pizzeria. I wish I knew which one. But there I am on a stool at the counter, sitting next to my mother, eating a calzone with ham.

For the record, I don’t want pepperoni in my calzone either.

My favorite part of a pizza slice is the crust, and a calzone has crust in spades. It’s all crust. Well, except for what’s inside all that glorious dough. And that is just a molten core of cheesy comfort.

There is an explanation for why I rarely write about calzones. I rarely eat calzones.

But I do have a few good reasons for this:
1) A calzone is a lot of food, and I’m not so crazy about leftovers
2) Calzones are more expensive than a slice, and I’m cheap
3) Calzones are insanely bad for you, and I’m “watching my health”

Sometimes I’ll throw caution to the wind, and get one to satisfy my inner pangs for a rich and savory meal. But I always get them unadorned. The days of ham in my calzone are long gone. As an adult I want them simply full of rich ricotta with just enough high quality mozzarella for balance and flavor.

I’ll generally get a bit of tomato sauce on the side. Mostly this is for seasoning.

To those who are all about the sauce, this probably seems blasphemous. But as far as I’m concerned sauce is always about seasoning the other elements of a pizza. Its role remains unchanged when the pizza morphs into a ricotta pocket.

But this was never pizza to begin with. It’s a ricotta delivery device. And I’m totally fine with that. It doesn’t replace pizza. It’s its own thing. And a wonderful thing at that.

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Of note, yesterday Little Miss Fussy and I went to Marissa’s for an afternoon slice. Despite my best wishes, my little girl insisted on getting a pepperoni slice. The difference between that slice and the pepperoni pie I judged in the AOA Tournament was significant.

Instead of baking the pie with the pepperoni, thick slices of the sausage are placed on top of a hot cheese pie. I suppose in theory this is a good plan, because then when the slice reheats, the meat is being crisped for the very first time. I thought it was interesting because the fat from the pepperoni begins to render on the warm pizza, long before the sausage ever sees the oven.

Since Little Miss Fussy doesn’t take her pizza heated, we got to eat the slice in this warm and transitional state. I felt that this was actually a better expression of cured meat on pizza. But I recognize I’m in the minority on this one.