Calzone Farcito: the Italian Recipe from a Milan Pizzeria

As I've mentioned several times here, I lived in Italy for almost 3 years, working for a company in the Olivetti group. The offices were in the centre of Milan, on Via Pantano, near the Torre Velasca, right above what is, for me, the best pizzeria in Milan, "Pane e Farina". The other one I liked is the Premiata Pizzeria on the Naviglio Grande, a lovely place.

At the pizzeria below the office, eating wasn't very expensive, about 10,000 lire, roughly 900 pesetas at the exchange rate, but that was quite a while ago now (10 years).

There I almost always ate the calzone farcito, a folded pizza (calzone, not "pizza calzone") filled with tomato, mozzarella and cooked ham; the difference from a normal calzone is the ricotta, a kind of fresh curd cheese like mató, which you can also find in Spain.

Yesterday I was home alone and had a Buitoni pizza base in the fridge (made by Nestlé), the rolled-up kind — I recommend it. Here's the recipe.

Calzone farcito

Ingredients

• A Buitoni pizza base
• Grated mozzarella
• Tomato sauce or crushed tomato
• Cooked ham
• Ricotta or mató

Method

I rolled the pizza base out a little with a rolling pin, on the baking paper it comes with. I do this so the pizza is thinner (and bigger, too). I spread a little tomato sauce on top (not much), then plenty of mozzarella, the ham and more mozzarella, and on top of everything the mató, standing in for the ricotta. It looked like the first photo.

Then I closed the pizza like a pasty to make a calzone, as in the second photo. To finish, I put a little tomato on top of the pizza and baked it at 180 °C for 5 minutes.

My oven doesn't work very well any more (in fact I've already ordered a new Siemens oven with a built-in microwave). That's why it got a bit burnt on top (as you can see in the last photo) and was a little undercooked underneath, but it turned out a super-professional calzone, a truly Italian result. Give it a try — it's easy.

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