Before we get started, let me apologize for the weird spacing and formatting. I promise one day I'll get the hang of blogging!I've had leftover chicken in my fridge for longer than I care to admit. It's from a chicken I boiled for stock, which means it needs to be in a casserole or something because there's not much flavor in boiled chicken. I was thinking I would make a pot pie with it, but I just haven't been inspired to make one.
One of the meals I was planning to make this week was ham, cheddar, and broccoli calzones. But the ham I got from the deli counter this morning was just too darn tasty and was just begging to be made into sandwiches.
Also lurking in the fridge was this odd, Amish-style Swiss cheese that I bought because it looked interesting, and I'd never heard of Amish-style Swiss cheese before. It's delicious, but for some reason we hadn't used much of it. I got my cheese from Publix a couple weeks ago and threw away the wrapper, and I grated it before thinking to take a pic, but the gorgeous cheese in the photo can be found here.
I made dough this afternoon from the recipe in an earlier post, and was planning to make extra steamed broccoli with dinner to go in the calzone filling. I wasn't making the calzones for a particular meal, just to have on hand in the freezer for my husband's lunch, quick dinners, or snacks.
All of a sudden it hit me - Chicken, Swiss, and broccoli calzones!!! As my pal Ina Garten would say, "How bad could that be?" Grant was happy on the porch playing with his tools at his tool bench making a "new invention," so I figured I'd go all out and make an actual cheese sauce instead of just using shredded cheese.
If I do say so myself, they are AMAZING!!! In fact, I don't even have a picture to show you because we ate all 12 of them after Grant went to bed. No, just kidding. Actually I just forgot to take a picture because I was too busy and excited making them. I know, I'm a food dork.
I kind of threw this together, but I will attempt to recreate the recipe because seriously, these were delicious and totally worth the extra steps of making a cheese sauce.
Chicken, Swiss, and Broccoli filling for calzones
For the cheese sauce:
3 Tablespoons butter
3 Tablespoons flour
salt and pepper
1 C chicken stock (or broth)
1/2 C milk
1 C shredded Swiss cheese
1 C finely chopped steamed broccoli
1 C shredded chicken
Melt the butter on low heat, stir in flour, salt and pepper. Whisk for a few minutes to cook the flour. Whisk in milk and stock, and turn up the heat. Bring it almost to a boil, and keep whisking until it's nice and thick. Remove from heat and stir in the cheese. Stir in broccoli and chicken, and assemble your calzones as directed here.
A note - For this recipe, only divide the dough into 8 pieces. You need thick dough rounds since the filling is a little runnier than the other ones I wrote about. If the dough is too thin the calzones could burst in the oven (and if they do it's not a big deal, just push the filling back in).
Eat all twelve at once, or eat a few, let the rest cool, then wrap individually in foil, label, and freeze.
Enjoy!
Please note, credit for the photo above comes from http://www.cubacheese.com/.
Claire Williamson, Representative for Ecological Babies
(850) 228-8322
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