Before Mallory Young plates a calzone, she cuts a whimsical smile into its face. So you might assume the head cook at Cheese’s Main Street Pizza is a fan of the dish.
Well, she is … sort of.
“I hate to make them, but I love them,” Young said.
Clearly it’s a complicated relationship. But just as clearly, her creation is a testament to respect gained from a deceptively difficult dish.
Cheese’s “East Coast” calzone is a marvel. Hearty, filling meats and cheese rest inside a delicate crust. Ricotta fences with smooth mozzarella on the inside. Meanwhile, a marinara sauce screeching with garlic calms into something remarkable when paired against the calzone.
Above all, it’s a culinary conundrum — of pizza, but not a pizza.
Food historians believe clever merchants in Naples (yes, home of the original pizza) invented the calzone as a street savvy version of the pie. Like the Cornish pasty, one could eat it on the go. The idea was relatively simple at the time: top a pizza, fold it in half and finish it in the oven.
But it’s not that simple these days.
Overload it with one ingredient or another and the flavor balance topples. Pull it from heat at the wrong time and the dough may be crispy on the outside, gooey closer to the filling. Dump gobs of red sauce inside and the entire thing becomes a sloppy mess. No wonder Young professes a love-hate relationship with the calzone.
“You have to layer everything perfectly,” she explained. “It takes craft.”
One of the keys to Cheese’s calzone is the bittersweet marinara. The wealth of herbs, spices and especially garlic worked into the tomato base lends an almost meaty savor. The earthy, biting wallop of garlic stands out, of course — and you might wonder if the kitchen holds a contest every morning to see how much of the stuff a bowl of marinara can hold.
But then you dip a slice of the calzone — in this case with salami and bacon — into the sauce. The raging garlic mellows out, pulling on the malty brown marks in the crust. The seasonings in the marinara dig into the meats, releasing pepper and smoke and other hidden notes.
It’s enough to make you pause and ponder. And that’s not typical around a calzone.
Yeah, it looks like a pedestrian calzone. But it is riveting. No wonder Young teeters between love of its flavors and respect for the all the possible missteps possible between rolling out the dough and setting it on the plate.
But, she acknowledges, guests at the downtown Lakeport restaurant love the results.
“They are very popular,” Young said.
So as each one heads into the oven, she designs a whimsical smile. It mirrors the smile that will soon show from the person who ordered the East Coast calzone.
Dave Faries can be reached at 900-2016
