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Ottolenghi's Pasta with Harissa Tomato Sauce, Capers and Olives
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This recipe is a tomato sauce with a twist: it doesn’t need much, but the heat of the harissa, the acidity of the capers and the salt from the olives and capers really spice up the plain tomato sauce. The pasta is on the table in no time, and it’s vegan if you don’t grate parmesan over it when you serve it (which I always do 🤷 ).
I sometimes add 1-2 teaspoons of caper brine to the sauce to bring out the acidity a bit more.
Be careful when buying harissa: as well as “normal” harissa, there is also rose harissa, which is much milder. If you have rose harissa, simply double the amount in the sauce as stated in the recipe - the heat should be similar for you.
This recipe is loosely based on the one by Yotam Ottolenghi from “Simple” (publisher’s website) and on a similar sauce from the cookbook “Vegetarisch vom Feinsten” (“Vegetarian at its best”), which can also be found on the publisher’s platform, for example.
Recipe #
Pasta with Harissa Tomato Sauce, Capers and Olives
20 minutes
2 portions
Ingredients #
- 1 small onion
- 1 clove of garlic
- 2 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon tomato puree
- 1 teaspoon harissa
- 1 can of tomatoes
- 30 g olives
- 10 g capers
- 1 pinch of sugar
- 1 pinch of cumin / cumin seeds
- 1 pinch of thyme
- 1 pinch of salt
- 8 g parsley
- about 200 g spaghetti
Directions #
- Peel and chop the onion and garlic. Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan and sauté the onion and garlic cubes until the onion is soft. Add the tomato puree and harissa and fry briefly, then add the tomatoes and simmer over a low heat.
- Meanwhile, cook the pasta in plenty of salted water.
- Stone the olives (if necessary) and slice or dice them. Add to the tomato sauce with the capers and season with sugar, cumin, thyme and salt.
- When the pasta is cooked, add it to the sauce, mix briefly and serve with the chopped parsley.
Carbon Footprint #
In total, two servings of pasta with harissa tomato sauce, capers and olives have an estimated carbon footprint of 1117 g.
This ranks it number 17 out of 53 recipes published on the blog so far in terms of estimated carbon footprint.
It is therefore part of the best tertile (top 33%) of the recipes with the lowest emission impact. 🤗Compared to other pasta recipes, our harissa tomato sauce has a better carbon footprint than Pasta alla Norma (-34%, 1705 g), but is a bigger climate impact than pasta with savoy cabbage-lemon cream sauce (+18%, 943 g).
Looking at the individual ingredients, the processed ingredients (oil, tomato paste, harissa, canned tomatoes, the only exception being the pasta itself) have a disproportionately high carbon footprint compared to, for example, onions or olives.
| ingredient | carbon footprint per kg | carbon footprint (in g) for 2 servings | % of ingredients | % of CO2 emissions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Onions | 1.0 | 0.2 | 10% | 1% |
| Garlic | 3.2 | 0.5 | 0% | 0% |
| Olive oil | 1.2 | 3.2 | 3% | 6% |
| Tomato paste | 0.2 | 4.3 | 2% | 6% |
| Harissa | 0.5 | 3.5 | 1% | 2% |
| Canned tomatoes | 0.5 | 1.8 | 52% | 64% |
| Olives | 3.2 | 0.5 | 4% | 1% |
| Capers | 1.8 | 0.5 | 1% | 0% |
| Sugar | 1.2 | 0.9 | 0% | 0% |
| Cumin | 0.7 | 1.1 | 0% | 0% |
| Thyme | 1.1 | 1.1 | 0% | 0% |
| Salt | 3.1 | 0.7 | 0% | 0% |
| Parsley | 1.0 | 1% | 1% | |
| Spaghetti | 0.7 | 26% | 13% | |
| Cooking sauce | 25 | 2% | ||
| Cooking pasta | 38 | 3% |
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