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!

Whole Wheat Macaroni in Creamy Tomato Sauce

Here's a quick fix recipe for an excellent creamy tomato sauce to go with your Slyly Simple whole wheat pasta. This is a hot favourite among kids - and is just as easy to make as any other instant meal.

Ingredients:
Slyly Simple spicy tomato sauce with olives - 150ml
Slyly Simple large macaroni - 1 box
Fresh cream - 50g
Grated cheese to garnish (parmesan tastes best, but use anything in the kitchen)

Procedure:
Cook the Slyly Simple large macaroni as per instructions on the box.
While the pasta cooks, mix together the sauce and cream to get a smooth consistency. Heat the mixture on a pan, or in the microwave (use a microwave friendly bowl and heat for about 1-1.5 minutes).
Once the pasta is cooked, toss it in with the sauce and make sure the pasta is coated well.
Serve into plates and top off with grated cheese.

You can be sure that this instant meal is going to be an instant hit with the kids, and considering that it is made from natural, fresh ingredients, your conscience will not have anything to worry about either!

Slyly Simple Gourmet Club

A day off can mean several things - a day to catch up on chores, a day to laze and soak in the extra time, a day to spend in idyllic bliss in front of the television with no reason to move or think, read a book, a movie marathon, long chat sessions on the phone or have friends and family over. All the wonderful things you always want to do when you're at home, but we normally end up dreaming about that perfect meal without having to cook it ourselves - which either means we spend a little too much money and time heading out to our favourite restaurant, or we give in to the easiest ready-to-eat meal from the supermarket and just sigh and make do...

Yes, Slyly Simple is a great solution - but one does need to remember to order it and stock it in the refrigerator, without which one couldn't simply enjoy the meal, right? Well, this is what made us create the Slyly Simple Gourmet Club - to make it equally Slyly Simple to stock the products, as it is to cook and serve them!

With three membership categories; Lime, Cream and Olive you can choose your preferred Slyly Simple combination which will be delivered to your doorstep every two weeks. No shopping lists, no extra coordination - your predefined Slyly Simple package will arrive just in time to suit your next gourmet meal craving. Not only that, you could always vary the specific combination of products, so that no two meals need be the same!

Besides the comfort and luxury of eating at home, you will find that you save more than half the cost of eating a comparable meal in a restaurant - spread this over three months, and you are looking at considerable savings (not to forget quality, taste and health benefits)!

So go on, sign up now and reclaim your Sunday, the Slyly Simple way!

Spinach spaghetti with zucchini - vegan recipe

Its recipe time! While we have been experimenting and playing with a bunch of new flavours, we haven't been very regular about posting them online and making it available to you all. So here's a Slyly Simple recipe that is bound to please with ease... all it takes is fifteen minutes, and you have a vegan main course for your special dinner!

You could also just as easily put this together into a microwave friendly bowl - and heat 'n' eat when you take your lunch break...

Ingredients (serves 2)

Slyly Simple vegan spinach spaghetti - 1 box (150g)

Slyly Simple vegan basil walnut pesto - 3 tablespoons

Slyly Simple tomato basil sauce - 4 tablespoons

1 medium sized zucchini, diced

 

Method:

Fill a saucepan with water and a pinch of sauce, and bring to a rolling boil. You can dice the zucchini while it boils.

 

Once the water is boiling, reduce the heat and slowly immerse the spaghetti. Let it simmer for about 4-5 minutes - stir gently now and then to make sure it all cooks.

 

While the spaghetti cooks, put the pesto into another sauce pan and heat on a low flame. As soon as the pesto is warm, add the zucchini to the pot, and stir well so that the zucchini is coated with pesto. Stir occasionally while cooking until the zucchini is just tender (about 2 minutes).

At this point, add the tomato basil sauce and mix well. Let the sauce heat up; your spaghetti should be ready around now.

 

Drain the spaghetti using a colander (do not rinse under cold water) and try to make sure most of the water is drained out. Now add the spaghetti to the sauce (which will be uniformly warm by now). Gently toss so that the spaghetti is coated with sauce (do not stir furiously, or the spaghetti will break).

 

Put the flame off, cover the pot for a couple of minutes so all the flavours come together. Et voila! Your Slyly Simple vegan delight is ready to serve!

 

Serving suggestion:

Serve alongside a fresh salad, or a slice of garlic bread for a simple and healthy meal!

Cooking pasta is easy!

Cooking pasta is easy, and there's little that can go wrong with it... here are some tips so that you enjoy every bite of your meal:

1. Fill a saucepan with water, and add a little salt to it (maybe 1tsp for every litre)

2. Bring the water to boil

3. Reduce the heat, so that the water is gently simmering

4. Gently introduce your Slyly Simple fresh pasta

5. Since all Slyly Simple pasta is made of whole wheat flour, let the pot simmer for around 5 minutes until the pasta is cooked, but is still firm to bite (cooked al dente).

6. Drain the pasta using a strainer, and toss it into a bowl with your favourite Slyly Simple sauce.

7. Toss well - garnish with cheese or basil or olives or sundried tomatoes or anything else that you prefer.

8. Eat hot!

Alternative:
Drain the pasta a little before it is full cooked, and introduce to a pan containing hot pasta sauce. Let the pasta cook fully in the sauce - this way it absorbs the flavours better.

Keep watching this space for oven and microwave suggestions!

Simple and sly - here's why

Wake up to an alarm, rush through your morning routine - walk the dog, get ready for work, drink some tea, shove in some breakfast, send the kids to school, instruct the maid... whatever it is that you need to do before you can finally step out. Its a big race to get out of the house on time, so you can spend the next one hour inching along in traffic, wishing you could have had an extra hour in bed instead. Work constitutes long hours in front of a computer, waiting endlessly for elevators, queues at the coffee machine, hurried lunches and dreaming about the weekend! Its finally time to take off in the evening, and you leave work full of plans of a fun evening - a movie perhaps, or visit the new restaurant, a nourishing dinner with the family, maybe invite some friends over. But then you have the arduous task of getting home, and plans change to slouching in front of the television, order in some pizza, serve the family some instant food, and socialize on Facebook instead. Nobody dreams of the mundane evenings we live every day, and yet, somehow, we are all stuck with the routine, Monday to Friday, waiting for the weekend of the mid-week holiday.
Traffic in Bangalore is out of control - and yes I know we all are part of the problem when we drive to work every day instead of using the public transport. Solving the traffic problem is another debate altogether, but we also need to look at what this does to our lives, our choices and our health. This is the very reason why Slyly Simple came into being - to make it possible to eat healthy, tasty and easily on a regular basis, in spite of all the problems that routine, traffic and pressure throw at you.

At the end of your day, the easiest thing to do is to grab a packet of instant noodles from the shelf. Now replace the noodles with a packet of fresh whole wheat pasta, and replace the taste maker with a dollop of fresh pasta sauce - the same effort results in a burst of flavour packed with health, freshness and nutrition. Its easy enough for anybody to make, and healthy enough to be eaten every day.
Experiment, add your own special touch - a dash of cream, some extra cheese, sauteed vegetables, meat, fish - with the basics in place your meal could only go from great to better. Its homemade, its gourmet, its exotic - bring a splash of flavour and fun to your mundane routine slyly and simply!