Corleone... the salad not The Godfather

We frequent this Italian place which was called 'Little Italy'. It recently changed management and is called Italia now. The menu and the quality remains the same. The food is all vegetarian and fantastic.

Over repeated visits we pretty much fixed on our order. The assorted crostini (little pieces of crisp garlic bread topped with all kinds of lip smacking goodness - artichokes, olives & cheese, tomatoes and parsley), Corleone salad and Tabasco pizza (thin crust pizza with sun dried tomatoes and cheese).

The Corleone salad is the most fascinating. It is an extremely simple dish. A bite is an explosion of flavours which are meant to be together. We decided to re-create it at home. We knew all the ingredients that went into and knew where to find them. So we began.

You need:

Iceberg Lettuce
Onions
Vinegar
Olives, capers, sun dried tomatoes
Sweet corn
Boiled potatoes
Olive oil

Wash the lettuce and cut it up into little pieces. Slice an onion and soak it in the vinegar for 2 hours. Boil sweetn corn till it is very soft.

Take lettuce in a large dish. Spread the vinegar onions, olive capers and sun dried tomatoes on top of it. Dice two boiled potatos and spread it on top of the dish. Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste. Mix it all up. Spread about one teaspoon of olive oil and the oil in the sun dreied tomatoes on top of all this. Mix in the corn into all this and you are done.




Serve with slightly toasted garlic bread or dinner rolls.

With soup to begin with, this makes for a complete, tasty and healthy meal.

Homemade Pizza - the best for anyday

I made Pizza yesterday night. I do a good job with it, if I might so say myself. I made vegetarian pizza, non-vegetarian pizza, veg extravaganza and non-veg extravaganza. That is four pizzas in all. S and I finished it all in one sitting.

All one needs to do is keep the entire ingredients ready, pre-heat the oven and begin with creating the best pizza I have had outside of The Pizzeria. I made different kinds of pizza. For the non-vegetarian bit, I used some Black Forest ham. I buy the pizza bases. That is much easier and I have never really found them to be lacking in taste or doubted their ability to become a tad crispy. The crispiness, by the way, I believe is essential for churning out a good pizza. I also use ready-made pizza sauce by Fun Foods. The one you see in the picture below. I have tried other brands and I have tried making the sauce at home myself. I have found this one the best yet and why tinker with that.


I made two veg pizzas of different toppings and two non-veg pizzas with almost the same toppings.

Mushroom, capsicum and onions. Not the favourite of the night.


Olives, Jalapenos and Sun-dried Tomatos. Definitely the better vegetarian pizza.


The winner of the night was clearly the non-vegetarian pizza with the very succulent ham topping. Ham, onions and chillies.


For the other non-vegetarian pizza, I just added mushrooms to the above.

Once the pizzas are ready with the toppings, just grate some cheese onto the top and stick it into a pre-heated oven. Be very sure that you are using mozzarella cheese. I have used the regular variety and it just does not cut the deal. It becomes hard and not very pizza worthy.


Pre-heat the oven on roast mode for 10 mins at about 250 deg. C. Post this, set it at 180 deg. C and 10 minutes. Put the pizza in. 10 minutes later, the most amazing cheesilicious pizza is done.