Home made pastas hold a lot of promise for me as I love crafting them myself. So whenever there is a chance to taste and witness some home made pasta I will be there. I had learnt a few pasta, risotto and Italian salads from Chef Maurizio Raselli at Hyatt last year and that was a wonderful experience. I have recreated those recipes many many times with my own inputs depending on seasonal produce available. You have the liberty of using alternative flours and fresh ingredients, trusted good quality oils when you make pasta at home, even your cheeses can be home made if you have an efficient kitchen both in terms of space and time management.
So when Chef Ganesh Joshi and his team were holding a home made pasta festival at Vivanta by Taj, Surajkund, I could not resist being there, despite a long distance that Surajkund is from my place. Oasis is a pleasant, open and well lit restaurant with a view of the green courtyard of the hotel. Oasis serves multi-cuisine and I loved the options on offer in the hefty menu.
Chef Ganesh Joshi introduced the home made pasta varieties available for the festival and told that regular pasta from a packet is just too common and often not the taste that home cooks in Italy create. I agree absolutely. Freshly made pasta has a charm of it's own.
This is the deftly crafted amuse bouche. This was a small slice of cooked beetroot folding a blob of goat cheese inside, served with a slice of orange and mint leaf. Drizzled with pomegranate molasses reduction, this amuse bouche was really a great start for more flavours to come.
The togliatti spinach and pea soup was really good. I loved it to bits. It was totally my kind of soup but I wouldn't care for a deep fried pasta to top the soup if I do it for myself. It created a great textural surprise for sure.
Breads on the table were nicely made...
This tortellini salad was great too. I love good dressings and fresh vegetables in my salad and the tortellini had curried chicken stuffing. Nicely made, beautiful plating and good taste.
The home made mini taco bowl salad was great too. This one can be a meal in itself, good textures and nice flavours.
In the mains there is this Caplotone with spinach and ricotta stuffing. I loved the generous stuffing in this huge stuffed pasta served over a bed of tomato salad and a drizzle of white wine emulsion. The only concern was the little uncooked edges of the pasta.
Chef Munish told more about the sauces and the various dressings they are using in the home made pasta they are making, he is in charge of Oasis kitchen, managing the home made pasta festival as well. His team has done great work on plating I must say.
The large sized cheese gnocchi with garlic infused shavings of asparagus and morel (a kind of mushroom) was lovely to look at. The gnocchi was a little too under cooked for me. Large sized dumplings can go wrong easily.
But I loved these mascarpone stuffed agnolotti with truffled mushroom sauce. This was something I would look forward to next time I am there. This was my kind of flavours and pasta was well done.
Chicken pansotti came with a nice parsley cilantro sauce. Well done pasta and nice creamy flavourful sauce. Well plated too.
They serve a show stopper pasta which is a baked ring of spaghetti with a meatball and parmesan. This one is flambeed live for the guest and creates a lot of interest.
The plating is beautiful too..
I liked everything on this platter of pasta except the baked ring of spaghetti. It had become too chewy and tough to cut with the knife and also had soaked all the flambeing alcohol. But the sauce is well done, meat ball is done perfectly and flambeing adds loads of flavour to the sauce and the meatball. Loads of grated parmesan helps too.
I was full by now, taking nibbles form each serving of pasta and gorging on all the fresh and crunchy broccoli and asparagus. Chef Munish suggested dessert and I initially declined but gave in to a chocolate mousse as he insisted.
This was a nicely done two tone chocolate mousse with layers of milk and white chocolate and glazed cherries and almond flakes. This chocolate mousse is large and can be easily shared between three people or at least two.
Feeling inspired to roll out some pasta next week. May be you get to see some here on this blog as well. Stay tuned in till then.
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