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!

The Monsoon Pasta Party!

Let your taste buds lead the way to Pagdandi this 5th and 6th July for the Monsoon Pasta Party conducted by Slyly Simple Gourmet Kitchen.
Slyly Simple specialises in artisan, hand crafted, fresh pasta and pasta sauces using only the finest of ingredients and whole wheat flour. Created by Surabhi Ganguly, Slyly Simple is a Bangalore based venture, making a short special appearance in Pune only this monsoon.
Join this party to EAT, for a variety of pasta dishes are available from salads to bakes. We will surprise you throughout the day with Slyly Simple signature dishes like spinach ricotta ravioli baked in a tomato parmesan sauce.Better still would be to join this party to TREAT - be the gourmet guru of the hour and go down on our wall of fame with your own signature pasta dish! Either way, enjoy this monsoon at Pagdandi on Baner-Pashan link road where wholesome food, books, activities, conversation and great company await you!

Event details:
The Monsoon Pasta Party
Pagdandi Books, Chai, Cafe
Shop No.6, Regent Plaza, Baner Pashan Link Road, Baner, Pune ? 411045
5th July 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM
6th July 11:30 AM to 10:00 PM
Brought to you by Pagdandi and Slyly Simple Gourmet Kitchen
Contact - +91-99166-75959 for details.

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!

Baked Ravioli

Making a batch of ravioli for a larger group of people can be time consuming - since the ravioli will need to be cooked in batches depending on the size of the saucepan. Besides, it is a challenge to keep the ravioli warm while you are cooking the rest of the batches, and you need to pester your guests to eat as soon as the ravioli is ready, lest it become cold and not quite as enjoyable. Ravioli also needs to be handled delicately, and you need to be really careful while tossing large quantities of it with a pasta sauce, so that none of them break apart. All together, serving ravioli to a larger group of people is a challenge, even when it is done the slyly simple way.

I've discovered the next best solution - bake it! You can cook all the ravioli in one go, leave it to cook in the oven as you can enjoy a conversation with your guests, and its much easier to keep it warm until its time to serve. You're far less likely to break the ravioli since they do not need to be handled as much - and even if a couple of pieces break, it still stays together without compromising on flavour or presentation. The texture of baked ravioli is not as soft as when they are boiled, so critics and connoiseurs may not approve - but I find this method to be very effective and tasty, particularly when you have a hungry lot hovering around the kitchen.

Here's how to go about it...

Step 1: Line a baking dish with a little bit of olive oil to make sure the pasta doesn't stick. Now spread out the ravioli in a single layer along the bottom of the dish.

Step 2: Cover the ravioli with your preferred pasta sauce - my favourite combination is with the cheesy tomato Slyly Simple sauce.

Step 3: Get creative - I used some asparagus in my dish. Perhaps you would like to try out some pieces of broccoli or mushrooms instead. You could even skip this step, it is going to taste great regardless.

Step 4: Add some cheese - I used grated cheddar here, but I imagine this would also be great with stronger flavours like goat cheese. You could skip this step too - although I'd say a bake looks incomplete without cheese :-)

If you like, you could repeat the steps above and make a second layer - my baking dish was wide enough so I stopped at one layer.

Step 5: Cover the dish with aluminium foil so that it bakes uniformly without burning the cheese. Pop into a pre-heated oven at about 100-120 degrees celcius, and bake for about 30-40 minutes. Baking time and temperature are rough estimates, its always safer to use a lower temperature and check on your dish after the first 20 minutes.

You could garnish the dish at the end with some fresh herbs or a dollop of butter if you like. Or if you can't wait anymore - just dig in!

Disclaimer: This dish is going to be a big hit, and you probably wont have enough. You may have some hungry faces at the dinner table even after this has been polished off.