Summer menu focus: Pasta gets faster

A NORTH Wales trading estate may not be the first place you would go for a pointer on what customers will be demanding from pasta dishes over the coming months. However, goings-on at the Flint plant that houses Creative Foods, the company which produces products for Brakes, provide a good barometer of trends in this marketplace.

It is Creative Foods' role to respond to the demands of the large managed pub companies and develop easy-to-prepare products accordingly.

The Mitchells & Butlers (M&B) and Wetherspoon's of this world shape what products you will find in the Brakes catalogue. Take the case of pasta, a staple which many pubs turn to as the weather gets warmer.

Pasta equipment installed over the past year at the plant is geared around keeping pace with the demands of successful food operations. Microwaved from frozen

Lately, this has been single-serve portions of pasta that can be microwaved from frozen in under a minute, individual portions of sauce, and a greater range of pasta types.

This is what Creative Foods labels 'component cooking' - enabling pubs to offer bespoke pasta dishes. The busy chef can assemble a range of pasta, sauce and protein or veg to go with it which produces an attractive, home-made looking dish without too much hard work.This microwave trickery may not be for every pub, but it undoubtedly works for many.

Creative Foods' new machinery includes an automated pasta cooker that can cook both short pasta, such as shells or twists, and long pasta, such as spaghetti or linguini. Previously, the company had only been able to cook short pasta on site. The technology affords greater control over the range of pasta it produces.

Increasingly, this pasta is dressed in an oil solution, which prevents the individual pieces from sticking together, and goes out in individual plain portions.

Another addition is a new pouching line, meaning sauces can be put into single-serve pouches. These can be boiled or heated in a bain marie and used with the unflavoured pasta.

Creative Foods has also been focusing on making the whole pasta dishes it produces more premium. The rocket pesto chicken pasta it launched last summer proved particularly popular, and there are more such whole microwaveable pasta dishes promised.

Provenance is an increasingly important issue with pasta, according to Creative Foods. "Gone are the days when a menu just said 'lasagne'," says its new product development manager John Trelfa. "Why not say freshly ground beef, mascarpone cheese and chianti. We will negotiate with M&B. If we can't bring a product like that in at cost, we'll turn to 'red wine', rather than 'chianti'."

Simon Henrick, Brakes group PR manager says: "Whole pasta dishes provide easily understandable margins for pubs.

"They're perfect for intermittent business because they can be kept frozen and cooked very quickly. It's all about offering something different to the customer. Otherwise, you commoditise a product and it becomes all about price."

And that's something we all want to avoid.