Cooking Through Fiction – Eleanor & Park's Stromboli

Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park is about first loves. Do you remember your first crush or your first love? Do you remember when making a mix tape for someone meant you were serious? It took a lot of time to gather all your cassettes together and stop and start the record button at just the right moment. I don’t know what people do now … make iTunes playlists? Will that make someone as giddy as a mix tape?

Do you remember when you could stay on the phone for hours? When you would be half asleep but still refuse to hang up because there was someone special on the other end of the line and just hearing that person breathe was enough? When your ear was red and hot from smashing the phone against your face just to hear that person breathing? The things we do for love…

Eleanor and Park do all sorts of things for love—they make mix tapes, they share comics, they stay on the phone long after the conversation ends, they love so hard they nearly break themselves. Been there. Done that. And they also go on dates. Their first official date is to a pizza parlor in town, and in their honor I made Strombolis. Here’s to you, first loves (wherever you are)!

“I don’t feel like cooking dinner,” his mom said.

It was just the three of them—Park, him mom, and Eleanor—sitting on the couch, watching Wheel of Fortune. His dad had gone turkey hunting and wouldn’t be home until late, and Josh was staying over at a friend’s.

“I could heat up pizza,” Park said.

“Or we could go get pizza,” his mom said.

Park looked at Eleanor; he didn’t know what the rules were, as far as going out. Her eyes got big and she shrugged.

“Yeah,” Park said, grinning, “let’s go get pizza.”

“I feel too lazy,” his mom said. “You and Eleanor go get pizza.”

(Rowell, Rainbow. Eleanor & Park, St. Martin’s Press: New York, 2013.)

 

Eleanor & Park’s Stromboli

Serves 2 or 4

Difficulty Level: Easy as rolling out the dough

Ingredients

1 package of unbaked pizza dough (homemade or store bought)

1 cup of shredded cheese (choose your favorite)

1 tbsp olive oil

1 can of Italian-style diced tomatoes or your choice of pizza sauce

fillings (pepperonis, hamburger meat, veggies, etc.)

Note: If using meat as fillings, make sure to cook all meat before adding it to your Stromboli.

How to Make

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
2. Cut pizza dough in half.
3. Lightly flour work surface. Roll out one half of pizza dough into an 8"x4" rectangle.
4. Turn your pizza dough rectangle so that it is taller than it is wide on the surface in front of you. Sprinkle ¼ cup of shredded cheese only on the right-side of the dough. Do not go past the middle.
5. Add 1 cup (combined) of fillings to the top of the cheese.
6. Sprinkle remaining ¼ cup of cheese to top of fillings.
7. Starting with the right-hand side, fold dough over the fillings and tuck dough beneath fillings. Fold in the top and the bottom. Continue to roll the dough up the rest of the way.
8. Place seam down on a lightly greased baking sheet. Cut slits in the surface of the dough to allow steam to vent.
9. Repeat steps 3-7 for second Stromboli.
10. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until desired browning is reached.
11. Sprinkle with tomatoes or dip away in pizza sauce.

Read my review of Eleanor & Park on Goodreads.