Rollin' with Flavour: Try This Amazing Easy Stromboli Recipe

Stromboli is an utterly delicious pizza turnover made of layers of cheeses, salami and ham with a tomato marinara sauce. Traditionally stromboli is made with pizza dough but making it using shortcrust pastry makes it even easier to make and roll. Serve this delicious stromboli with some more tomato marinara sauce for dipping! This is a pushy recipe Dear Reader.

Stromboli is like a cousin of calzone or the scaccia in Sicily and was created by Italian Americans living in the Pennsylvania area. I've made stromboli using pizza dough before and it was so delicious I had to have it taken away from me because I couldn't stop eating it. If you love a really good filling to pastry or bread ratio then you will love stromboli! I had overbought salami and ham for Halloween and I also had lots of cheese from my charcuterie ouija board, green stuffed olives and black olives from decorating Halloween food so making a stromboli again was sort of a given. Mr NQN absolutely adores this and his eyes light up when I make it.

Tips for Making an Easy Stromboli

1 - You want your pastry to be a large rectangle (around 40x20cm or 15.7x8 inch) for the toppings. If you are making it in Australia it will use up 2x 20x20cm/8x8inch squares of shortcrust pastry. In America I believe your pastry comes already in 15x10inch sheets so it's ready to go.

2 - Join two squares of pastry together, pressing down on the seam (easiest when the pastry is soft). Press down on both sides.

3 - The rest is easy-just layer away! Just leave 1 inch uncovered right on one side of the shortest end so that you can seal it all when you roll it up.

While some Halloween leftovers prompted me to make this easy stromboli, it has been such a hotly requested item by Mr NQN that I've made it four times since. I love making this when I see sliced ham, salami and cheese on sale at the shops and I stock up on it because you're never far from one of the most delicious things you'll ever try. Also the ingredients aren't super perishable and can be frozen if need be. I serve a slice of this with some Sardinian minestrone to Mr NQN at lunch and he adores it.

Recently a friend asked on social media how much people spend on groceries each week. Most people are not immune to the cost of living crisis and escalating prices of goods and it was interesting to see how much people spend a week. Quite a few people were spending over $350 a week for groceries and the people spending the most were ones with tall teenage boys who are basically adults in terms of what they eat (or an adult and a half in some cases!).

For us, we spend around $150 per week on groceries for 2 people and 2 dogs. I will say that it's only on the lower side because we eat out 2-3 times a week too which obviously reduces the grocery spend and perhaps cooking from scratch also helps. And making things like this using ingredients bought when they're on sale also helps!

So tell me Dear Reader, how much do you spend a week on groceries and how many people is that for? Do you have any tips on saving money when buying groceries?

Easy Stromboli

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Preparation time: 25 minutes

Cooking time: 60 minutes

• 2 x 200g/7ozs sheets shortcrust pastry
• 1/2 cup/125g/4ozs tomato pasta sauce/marinara sauce (not too chunky is ideal)
• 8 slices Swiss cheese
• 200g/7ozs salami
• 100g/4ozs stuffed green olives, sliced
• 50g/1.7ozs pickled jalapenos, finely diced
• 8 slices provolone cheese
• 200g/7ozs ham, sliced
• 100g/3.5ozs pitted black olives, roughly chopped
• 1 egg beaten for egg wash
• 2 tablespoons shaved parmesan
• 1 cup/250g/8.8ozs tomato pasta sauce/marinara sauce to serve

Step 1 - Thaw the pastry on the counter while you prepare the olives and the remainder of the ingredients.

Step 2 - Lay out the pastry on a wide sheet of parchment. Lay two pastry squares next to each other and press down the pastry on the seams so that they join (this is easiest when the pastry is quite soft). Press down on both sides.

Step 3 - Spread the pasta sauce across the pastry leaving one inch at the end on the shorter side. Layer with the Swiss cheese, then the salami and then sprinkle over with the green olives. Then layer with ham slices, jalapenos and black olives.

Step 4 - Start rolling this up from the short end without the 1 inch gap. Roll up as tight as possible without breaking pastry. Press down on the pastry end to seal. Place the whole roll on the parchment and brush with egg wash and sprinkle with parmesan. Make light slashes across the top with a knife. I refrigerate the roll while the oven comes to temperature.

Step 5 - Preheat oven to 190C/380F fan forced and bake for 40-45 minutes. Allow to cool off for 30 minutes or so and then slice off the ends (cook's treat!) and serve with extra marinara sauce.