The Calzone Story
by Jason Astuto
When I was a kid, my grandmother used to make something special for Easter. She would grind pork, season it, mix the cooked pork with eggs and cheese and stuff the mix into pastry dough, and bake it for an hour. She would make 13, one for each Apostle, on Good Friday. We were not allowed to eat any of them until Easter Sunday, after Mass. She made them every year, until my grandfather died in 1994. After that, I convinced her to make them one or two more times, but the amount of work was difficult for her even with my help. In the next few years, my mother made a few attempts to recreate the excitement, but she never got the recipe quite right. Yesterday, G-Ma asked me to make them for her.
I wanted so very much to figure out a way to do this. Carmella can’t remember much, but she can still remember making what she called “Cavazzonne” with her mother. She has told me of times making it as a child, in their home in Hazelton, and of times making it with her own children, and mother, in Los Angeles, after the whole family had moved to the west. I can remember making it with G-Ma, and my great grandmother, Angeline Aselta, in 1977, the year before she died. The problem was no recipe. Carmella can remember doing it, but not how. There had to be a way.
I started looking in her old cookbooks, which were cloth bound editions from the 40’s and 50’s, for any clues, or possibly the recipe itself. I knew it wasn’t in the book as a published recipe, but my G-ma had stuffed hundreds of hand written concoctions in her books over the years. On the very first piece of paper I pulled out, was pay dirt. A hand written letter to Carmella dated January 28, 1952, which among other topics of the time included the recipe for “Calzone” as written by my great grandmother. I was meant to make Calzone. Carmella just kept reading and re-reading the letter with a big smile, as I prepared the shopping list. Fennel, peppercorn, hot pepper, lard, flour, 4 dozen eggs, ricotta….
So, today, I embark upon a big baking task. I am going to turn a 10 pound pork butt, several pounds of cheese and many other delicious substances into a trip down memory lane. Although the recipe does not call for them, I also got two bottles of Chianti, since it’s going to be a long day. Plug in the mixer, fire up the oven and call me Chef. I wonder what I am going to do with 13 of them.