Hommage a Scorsese

Having not seen The Departed, P, E and me decided to put together a Scorsese evening to make an event of the film; all the more apt that it has now scooped a stack of Oscars. Food would have to play a big part in the evening as it has done in his films, many of which have meant a great deal to me. I shan't ever forget seeing Taxi Driver and Raging Bull as a double-bill at The Everyman (actually it was a triple bill, with Boxcar Bertha, but we were sufficiently traumatised to only be able to cope with two films), nor watching The King of Comedy, Mean Streets or Bringing Out the Dead for the first time. Most of all, I shall never tire of watching After Hours, which somehow manages to be one of the funniest, most stylish and engaging films ever made - and having now spent a night of my own wandering the streets of Soho in NYC (locked out...) I can also identify with the craziness which Griffin Dunne encounters on that very strange night of his.

Although The Departed is set in Boston, the food for a Scorsese evening has just gotta be Italian, so we're having tortiglioni with home-made pesto, salad, pugliese bread and a few Peronis - all from the great Gazzano. The quality of pesto is evidently determined by the excellence, or otherwise, of the basil used, and this is where Italian delis come into their own, because the aromatic basil they sell is a long, long way from the un-perfumed kinds you find in supermarkets (the Israeli origin question is also a non-issue in delis). Three other keys to making pesto, in my book, are: resist the temptation to chop too fine, use much more basil than you think you'll need, because mean pesto ain't good pesto, and make sure that you offer people the chance to add lots more grated parmesan.

While The Departed isn't any great shakes, it's a pretty entertaining genre film of a superior sort and Scorsese fans don't need the great man to produce any more these days. It's not as though he's turned into Woody Allen or some other director who should have given up in 1992 (Husbands and Wives). I don't remember there being much food in The Departed, but Scorsese desrved both his Oscar and a feast.