February is a time of love and laurels. This Sunday, we’ll celebrate our country’s love of passing the pigskin and the sport’s ultimate accomplishment: raising that golden football high in the sky. A week later, with the sounds of whistles still ringing in our ears, we’ll gather for the music industry’s mecca, squealing with delight (and sometimes dismay) as new kings and queens of pop are crowned. But who can concentrate on Lady Gaga’s latest spectacle when our Oscar ballots (and worst-dressed predictions) have yet to be filled out?

All this crowd-gathering hoopla means February is a time for appetizer-filled parties – that tricky segment of entertaining which calls for quick-to-make, easy-to-grab snacks that all too often lack excitement, imagination and, well, flavor. But the buck stops here. This month, we’re taking the classic pizza roll we all know and love from childhood (and our penniless college days) and breaking it down into ingredients we can actually pronounce – and flavors you actually salivate over.

The most challenging part of making (or remaking) this beloved after-school snack wasn’t trying to make a suitable substitute for those tongue-tying ingredients. That was fairly simple. The stumper was finding a way to do so that could compete with the original’s prep convenience: i.e. just popping them in the oven. The solution? Wonton wrappers. Though these delicate sheets yield a slightly bigger and longer version than the little bundles pulled from a cardboard box, they also lend a crispy crunch around the edges that is a nice complement to the ooey, gooey center. But be warned: Sealing the edges can be a bit tricky, so make sure you use plenty of egg white and pinch together firmly. You might even seal the edges with a fork.

Then again, what’s a pizza roll without a little cheesy spillage on the foil? That was always my favorite part.

Click here to find the recipes for pizza rolls made with pepperoni, pepperoni and sausage, mushroom and cheese, and sausage and broccolini fillings.

— photo by Kristi Schiffman

By Beth Styles

Tags: pizza rolls, snacks, Super Bowl, vegetarian, Vegetize It, wonton wrappers

This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2013 at 3:53 pm and is filed under Cooking, Make This. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.