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November 07, 2005
Butter Sage Sauce, The NYC Marathon
One of the trademark flavors of Al Di La is the butter sage sauce. Tonight, I followed Lidia's simple recipe and wound up with nearly the same dish we've had in the restaurant. You melt half a stick of butter with 8 sage leaves until it's just melted and bubbling, then you add cooked ravioli with 1/4 cup of the ravioli water, and cook that down until it's creamy. Finish it with salt, pepper, and asiago and it's perfect. We had that with a side of Italian salami, bread, feta (mainly because I went a little nuts buying things at the newly expanded D'Vine Taste today), and white wine. Try it. You'll thank me.
In other news, we fit two movies, Marathon spectatorship, Prospect Park picnicking, minor bar hopping, and grilling on the roof (in November!) into the weekend. The movies were good: we watched a "special" edition of "Star Wars: Episode I" -- the one that was edited to cut out the annoying Jar Jar hijinks -- and "Supersize Me" (great concept). Wish I had the energy to go into some sort of detail about everything, but I'll stick to the Marathon. It's always incredibly uplifting to watch thousands of people in various states of agony running down Fourth Avenue. We were right next to some live music, which cheers up all the runners, and lots of them are clearly emotionally affected by the cheering crowds. It's such a leap of faith to enter the marathon, and such a courageous thing to actually run one, no matter what kind of shape you're in. And the sheer volume of people running in it -- in all sorts of costumes, of all ages, shapes, and sizes, and from all over the world -- is so encouraging. All of these people have made a bet with themselves that they can maintain a positive enough attitude to run 26.2 miles without having a complete physical and mental breakdown. It takes a good deal of optimism to do that, so when I see so many sweaty, confident runners go by I always feel emotional. Given my running talent, I probably won't ever run a full marathon, but just watching it gave me a little mini runner's high.
Posted by csageday at November 7, 2005 12:01 AM