Goat's cheese and asparagus calzone pizza

The inspiration for this recipe came from Sophie Grigson and William Black's Organic cookbook ISBN0 747272204

I wanted something to use this year's meagre crop of giant asparagus, so this recipe seemed an ideal candidate.

The giant asparagus is a little on the woody side so it needs much more cooking than normal.

Eveything else was from either a fridge or a garden raid. We have our own hens so that's a help!

Ingredients

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• 1 portion of pizza dough - Makes 2 pizzas
• 5 or 6 spears of giant asparagus
• 1 green bell pepper, roasted de-seeded and roughly chopped
• 220 g of goat's cheese
• 4 tablespoons of tomato sauce - see Chef's notes below
• 2 hard boiled eggs, peeled but left whole
• A handful of fresh herbs, chopped
• Extra virgin olive oil
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Mise en place

• Chop the asparagus diagonally in 2cm slices, discarding the woodier parts from lower down.
  • Normal asparagus can be left whole and blanched for about 3 to 4 minutes.
• Boil the asparagus for 10 to 12 minutes
• Roast the pepper - see here
• Make the pizza dough
• Preheat the oven to 220° C (425° F - gas 7), [fan oven 200° C & reduce cooking time by 10 mins per hour]

Method

1. Make 1 pizza per person
2. Roll the dough out into two circles
3. Divide the fillings into two portions, one for each pizza
4. Spread the tomato sauce on to one half of the circle, leaving the edge free from sauce
5. Crumble the cheese over the sauce
6. Sprinkle the chopped herbs, asparagus and green peppers over the sauce
7. Pop the egg in the middle, season with salt and pepper and give a final drizzle of olive oil
8. Brush the clean edge with water or milk so it helps to make a good seal
9. Fold the pizza Calzone folding
10. Bake for about 20 minutes

Variations

• These pizzas are so versatile that you can put almost anything in them. They will get hot enough to melt the cheese but anything that might need pre-cooking needs to be done outside of the pizza. They get just hot enough to cook a raw egg if that's any help.

Chef's notes

As we make pizzas so often, I divide up homemade tomato sauce into single-pizza-portions and freeze them in small bags. If I've no homemade sauce, I cheat and use a few tablespoons from a bottle of ready made pasta sauce and freeze the remainder as above.

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