ASP.NET MVC multi-level menu from database

[asa2008]

I have a table called Categories and it contains the following fields:Id | Name | ParentId //parent id actually is a self reference so from the _Layout.cshtml am calling the partial view called MainMenu.cshtml_Layout.cshtml\[code\] @Html.Partial("MainMenu")\[/code\]How can I can send the model to the mainmenu, i know there is an overload of partial, where i can send a model as well. am trying to solve the problem in an elegant way that doesn't break the MVC architecture.