I love to find a new pasta dish that is created (I wanted to say spawned but it sounds a bit alien) from pantry staples. This is it! It has flavour, it’s healthy and it really works!

Substitute ingredients for others you have, such as swapping kale for spinach or changing the type of pasta – I actually enjoy wholegrain pasta in this dish because the sauce is robust enough to balance the nutty grain. I did buy a good quality wholegrain mind you, which was lots more expensive than its paler counterpart.

I found the recipe on one of my favourite blogs – 101 Cookbooks, link as follows. The only thing I changed was to use linguine rather than spaghettini. If you can find the Greek oil cured olives (the black, wrinkly ones), I think they are best for this recipe but don’t stress about it.

I’ll cut to the chase, as I’m sure you want to get cracking…..just one thing to consider is the harissa…it varies in hotness, so taste the oil as you go. In my recipes, I never mention salt/pepper (which I hope is ok) let’s just presume we all have copious amounts of the stuff…..

Ingredients Serves 2

• 3 garlic cloves
• ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tbsp harissa paste
• Enough pasta for 2 (however much you normally serve)
• Enough kale (washed and deveined) to provide 2 large handfuls when cut into bite size pieces
• 1 large handful of oil-cured black olives
• Handful of toasted pine nuts
• Zest of 1 lemon

Method

Put a large pan of well salted water on to boil.

Toast pine nuts and leave to one side.

In the meantime, crush garlic cloves in pestle and mortar with a good pinch of sea salt until you have a paste.

Add harissa and oil and whisk until well combined then set aside.

Add your pasta to the water, once boiling and time until al dente.

Drain pasta and leave in a colander whilst you heat up ¾ of your harissa oil in the pasta pan with the kale then tip the pasta back in, stir to coat and spinkle in the toasted pine nuts and olives.

Serve in bowls, drizzle with remaining harissa oil and eat quickly before it gets cold!!