Pulled Pork Stromboli

Earlier this week, I was a little stumped about what I would be cooking for dinner. My usual Internet and magazine searches weren't yielding any appetizing suggestions. Maybe I was just in a fickle mood. At any rate, I sat down with a blank piece of paper and started brainstorming, putting together strange combinations of food to get the creative juices flowing.

And that's how it happened... Pulled Pork Stromboli. Forgotten what a stromboli is? Check here: http://thebagourmet.blogspot.com/2010/01/leftover-corner-sauce-to-stromboli.html

I guess you could say I'm a fan of mixing culinary styles. Some of my favorite dishes on this blog are BBQ chicken pizza and breakfast quesadillas, after all.

Ingredients:

2 Balls of Prepackaged Pizza Dough

1 Container of Lloyd's Shredded Pork

Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ Sauce

Shredded Cheese (Mexican Blend)

1/2 Onion

1/2 Bell Pepper

Mushrooms

Leftover Corn (optional)

Steps/Analysis:

Dice the onion and pepper and start sauteing over Medium heat. Pull them off the stove when they just start to turn brown. You want to take the raw vegetable edge off of them, but remember that they'll be wrapped in dough and cooked some more in the oven.

Dice the mushrooms as well. There's no need to saute them, though.

Then, sprinkle some flour across the counter and grab a rolling pin. Start rolling out half of the total amount of pizza dough. Try to get a fairly big, rectangular shape.

Once you're there, spoon half of the Lloyd's pork down one side of the length of the rectangle. Then, add the onion, peppers, and mushrooms on top. There was some leftover corn in the kitchen from a previous dinner, so I threw that in too, just for the hell of it. Pour on a little BBQ sauce to help hold everything together and top with a thin layer of shredded cheese.

Next, fold the sides of the dough in towards the center and roll everything up like a giant burrito. Try to seal up the seams as well as you can to avoid leaks - a little olive oil will help if excess flour is preventing a good seal. You can also brush some olive oil over the top of the newly-formed stromboli to encourage browning in the oven.

Finally, carefully transfer this Italian/BBQ monster to a pizza stone or baking dish. Repeat with the second half of your dough to make another, identical stromboli.

Place the stone or pan in a 350 degree oven for about half an hour. When the strombolis are done, let them rest for about 5 minutes to help keep the insides from spilling out when you cut them up.

Serving/Notes:

Despite my best efforts to neatly encapsulate everything, this is quite a messy meal. The end slices of the stromboli are manageable by hand, but the center pieces are best attacked with a knife and fork.

That being said, the effort is well worth it. The pulled pork strombolis were really tasty - kind of like a summer BBQ in every bite. People dove right in. Just check out the aftermath...

Leftover Corner: Sauce to Stromboli

One of the easiest ways to make a meal appear out of thin air is to creatively use leftovers. As a cook, I love to cheat. I have no qualms about taking something already prepared (usually by my mother), adding a few ingredients, and making an entirely new dinner. I imagine that one day I'll be repurposing myown leftovers, but for the time being, it makes perfect sense to use whatever I can get my hands on. In that spirit, I'm proud to introduce a new segment (thread? theme?) on The B.A. Gourmet: Leftover Corner!

You don't have to eat spaghetti and meatballs three nights in a row just because you have a big pot of sauce in your fridge. With a little dough, you can easily turn that into strombolis! For those who haven't been fortunate enough to have a background in fine Italian eatables, a stromboli is similar to a calzone, kind of an Italian turnover - a rolled, hot sandwich.

Ingredients:

1 Pot of Leftover Sauce and Meatballs

2 Packages of Pre-made Pizza Dough

Grated Mozzerella Cheese

Sliced Pepperoni

Sliced Olives

Steps/Analysis:

You'll want to lay everything out ahead of time. The fewer moves you make, the better your strombolis will hold up. Find some counter space and dust it with flour. Next to that area, you'll want to lay out a baking sheet or pizza stone.

Unwrap your first package of pizza dough and flour up your hands and a rolling pin. Starting in the center of the dough, roll outward. Rotate the dough as necessary; you're aiming for a long, roughly rectangular shape.

I decided to make one pepperoni and one meatball stromboli, but you could take the same basic idea and make limitless versions and combinations.

For the first stromboli, ladle on a layer of sauce and then sprinkle on a generous amount cheese. Put a layer of pepperoni and olive slices on top of that. At this point, tuck in the ends and roll the stromboli. Smooth down the seam as well as you can and then place that side down on your sheet or stone.

The construction of the meatball stromboli is very similar. Instead of pepperoni, cut up as many meatballs as you need to fill your roll. I prefer to add the cheese on top of the meatballs, instead of between them and the sauce; that seems to hold everything together better.

Make sure each stromboli has enough room to expand and leak a little (it's inevitable) and place them in a 350 degree oven for approximately 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Serving:

Let the strombolis sit around for a few minutes before eating. The insides need to settle down and stabilize. Otherwise, they'll run out in a lava flow when you cut the strombolis into manageable pieces.

As long as you're careful assembling everything, it's very difficult to go wrong with this recipe.