Hugo Chetcuti’s pizzaiolos have endeavoured to bring you the very best of Italian cuisine – which means that along with the classic and much-loved pasta, pizza, focaccia and delicious desserts, they also serve up the mouth-watering calzone.
This crescent-shaped doughy goodness gets its name from the Italian word for “trouser leg”. The folded over pizza carries all the toppings on the inside rather than the outside, meaning that there is an added element of surprise before you bite into the crust. Have a look at all the reasons why Hugo Chetcuti and his staff are so crazy about calzone:
The Origins
Both pizza and calzone have roots that many think go back to Ancient Egypt, when the use of flat bread was already widespread. The concept of the folded over pizza also came about sometime during the 18th century in Naples, stuffed with a delicious blend of mozzarella or ricotta cheese and a mixture of vegetables and meat. These original calzoni were most probably much smaller in size as they were made for a single person; nowadays, it’s quite common to share considerably larger ones with others.
Calzoni vs Pizza
The dough used to make calzone is baked rather than fried, after which it is rolled and folded in two with braided designs around the ends. The traditional ingredients used are olive oil, yeast, flour, salt and water. Another thing that differs calzoni from pizzas are the sauces which are served on the side for dipping.
Trust in the crust
There’s never any need to worry about the filling inside going cold, as the hard crust acts as an insulator keeping everything inside warm (and gooey, in the case of the cheese). It also makes the pizza extra portable, making it a great snack to take to work or when you’re on the go. After all, the original idea behind the calzone was to create a “walk around pizza”.
Calzoni in popular culture
It was Seinfeld (a.k.a. the superior 90s sitcom about friends in New York) which really caused calzoni to take off in the US. In one episode, George wins approval from his superior at work by bringing in an aubergine calzone to the office, only to be refused service from the restaurant from which he bought it due to a disagreement over tipping. In typical George fashion, he goes to all kinds of desperate lengths to obtain another identical calzone with the same filling, just to remain in his boss’s good books.
Hugo Chetcuti is proud to bring the taste of Neapolitan cuisine to Malta, with three delicious calzone recipes to choose from at Hugo’s Pizza and Pasta. They’re also served with delicious dipping sauces, along with unusual yet flavoursome ingredients like champignon mushrooms, truffle or pumpkin cream and pistachios. To paraphrase Kramer from that infamous Seinfeld episode – we think we can make a pretty mean calzone!
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