Pasta for your party? Make it live!

It takes more than a great recipe to serve pasta to a large group of people. Pasta that has been mixed with the sauce and left to rest becomes soggy or rubbery, depending on how much it has been cooked. Delicate sauces dry up easily, and all together it can be a rather unpleasant experience. Besides, with each person digging around the serving dish with a serving spoon can result in wasting a lot of food, since the pasta gets mashed together and looks rather unpalatable after a few serves.

One option is to bake it in a large tray, so you can cut neat portions while serving - but that may not necessarily be the way on prefers to eat pasta.

Another option is to make a delicious pasta salad - but then again, thats the trick. Its got to be delicious, or it wont be popular!

I think that there are two ways to serve a delicious plate of pasta. One is to toss the hot pasta with warm sauce and serve immediately into portions, and the other is to serve the hot pasta onto the plate, and ladle some sauce onto it. I would personally choose my technique depending on the pasta shape. Method one works with short, robust shapes like penne, fusilli, macaroni and the likes - while the second method works well with long or delicate shapes like fettuccine, spaghetti, ravioli. Keep some parmesan to sprinkle on top and you can have a picture perfect plate for every guest.

Obviously this means that pasta needs to be cooked just before it is served - and when the crowd gets bigger, that can get pretty complicated.

An ideal option is to set up a live counter. It could then be an interactive activity, where either you serve each person yourself and have a nice conversation with them while their plate gets ready, or if you are well staffed, have someone man the counter while each person specifies their preferences. With a couple of options for pasta sauce, and a few add-ons that people could jazz up their dish with, you could actually create an activity as part of your meal. However, to make this function smoothly, without making your guests have to wait indefinitely for their food, this does take a little planning and practice. Its also wise to choose pasta and sauces that cook quickly - Slyly Simple fresh pasta and pasta sauces would do the job for you!

So the next time you have a party - there is no reason why pasta couldn't be on your menu! Additionally, you could always call us in to help you man the pasta counter, and that way you dont need to worry about it at all!