Food and Cooking

I would suggest “custom spinach pesto”, where you serve a base of plain spinach pesto made from lightly cooked spinach, onion, garlic, salt, pepper, and lots of olive oil. Blended, then mixed with spiral pasta in a very large bowl.

Then, you provide your guests with a very large selection of mixins: halved cherry tomatoes, bacon, fried mushrooms, steamed broccoli, grilled zucchini, olives, capers, Parmesan, grilled chicken breast, rucola, chili flakes or oil, pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, anchovy paste, sun dried tomatoes, baked tofu, etc etc.

I’ve made this numerous times for a crowd that was a mix of allergies, vegans, picky eaters. The spinach pesto base can be either mixed into pasta initially or also placed on the side. The most picky of guests eat basically plain noodles and the others are experimenting with different combinations with each serving.

Serve with a very simple classic salad (lettuce, tomato, cucumber) with a bright acidic dressing, which complements the pasta in both flavor and simplicity.

You may optionally offer whole pieces of grilled chicken or something on the side to make it feel like a more complete meal.

Another simple dish we made numerous times for this crowd was Levantine mujaddara, which is lentils, rice, and caramelized onions with warm spices. It’s a superb dish for a vegetarian crowd, but your picky eater might find lentils and cinnamon off putting. I serve this often with baked chicken on the side. To match the Levantine theme, just bake chicken thighs kind of plain and after pulling from oven coat in olive oil, lemon juice, salt, fresh garlic.