Basta Pasta! Cooking Pasta for a Crowd

Lacking a magical pasta pot like Strega Nona (grandmother witch), a favorite character from the pen of legendary children's book author and illustrator, Tomie DePaola, I recently faced the challenge of serving 4 pounds of pasta to a crowd in some sort of condition that was relatively fresh and tasty (vs. limp and gummy) and could be reheated on demand as needed. A quick perusal you-know-where led me to a quite detailed explanation on Yahoo Voices,  "How To Hold Pasta for Later Service." Armed with this sage advice from Ron James, a denizen of the blogosphere, and a freezer bin of ice cubes, I set to work.

I cooked one pound of pasta at a time, in a huge pot of boiling salted water. My first "truc" (French for little kitchen trick) was meant to make it easy to quickly extract the pasta from the boiling water without having to empty and repeatedly start a new pot of water. I nested a metal kitchen colander that caught on the edges of the pot and stayed immersed deeply enough in the pot to hold the pasta as it cooked. The pasta was dropped into the colander in the boiling pot of water, making it easy to stir it (about every 3 minutes) until it was just short of my desired state of al dente, which was about 1-2 minutes less than the published cooking time.

When the time came to remove the pasta, I grabbed the colander and immediately dumped the pasta into a large bowl of ice cubes and chilled water that I had already prepared in the sink. This dunking stopped the cooking and chilled the pasta in one go. The next step was to spread it out in a layer on a lint-free dishtowel, rollup the dishtowel and let the pasta dry a bit while I started the next batch cooking. (See how smart I am- still had my boiling pasta water at the ready!)

After the pasta had dried a bit- maybe five minutes - I tossed it in a plastic storage container with a drizzle of olive oil, covered and refrigerated it. Voila! Only 3 more pounds to go.

Reheating the pasta meant following the process in reverse. I again set up the boiling pot of water with the colander. This time I used tongs to put a portion or more of cold pasta in the colander, let it reheat and finish cooking to perfection (just two - three minutes), removed it with the tongs to drain briefly in a second colander or strainer set in a large bowl, and then served it forth. (Did I mention that the reheating operation was taking place outside the confines of a kitchen on a hot plate? Aren't you impressed with my improvisational cooking skills?!)

To sauce the pasta I used multiple recipes of Mario Batali's Essential Tomato Sauce from Food & Wine. My recommendation is to make one more recipe than you think should be enough, just trust me on this- you don't want to run short. Because my crowd included numerous potential picky eaters (young children), I offered grated cheese and sliced olives as condiments.

Batali's Essential Tomato Sauce
The simple additions of shredded carrot and fresh thyme add a deeper dimension to this sauce's flavor. Another example of why Mario makes the big bucks!
Preparation time: 45 minutes
Makes about 5 cups (If it were me, I would make one recipe per pound of pasta)

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1/4 cup finely shredded carrot
1 TB finely chopped thyme
Two 28-ounce cans whole peeled tomatoes with their juices, crushed
Salt (to taste)

In a saucepan, heat the oil until shimmering. Add the onion and garlic and cook over moderate heat, stirring, until softened and just starting to brown, 10 minutes. Add the carrot and thyme and cook, stirring, until softened, 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes and their juices and bring to a boil. Simmer over moderately low heat, stirring, until thickened and reduced to 5 cups, 30 minutes. Season with salt.
The tomato sauce can be refrigerated for up to 1 week.

So, there you have it- the sum total of my knowledge of mass pasta cooking. Have I told you about the time I made 1000 crepes for a wedding party of 500?