Healthy Spaghetti Puttanesca – Great Winter Warmer!
When it gets to this time of year a lot of my clients tell me they want ‘winter warming’ type food and therefore find it harder to eat healthily. I never quite understand this, because healthy doesn’t have to be a boring cold salad. And a classic ‘winter warming’ dish such as am oven bake or a stew does not have to be unhealthy. So with that in mind I thought I would share one of my favourite winter warmer recipes – Healthy Spaghetti Puttanesca.
I’m sure you have had puttanseca or at least seen it in an Italian restaurant before. It’s basically a tomato based sauce with olives, anchovies, capers etc, served with spaghetti. Really tasty, but I adapt the traditional recipe a bit to make it healthier. But I firmly stand by the fact it DOES NOT detract from the taste and flavour.
Changes to the puttanesca recipe;
1/ Traditionally there is no protein in the dish. It’s just spaghetti and sauce. Firstly I am a firm believer that you need to get some lean protein in every meal. And secondly you will end up eating a lot more spaghetti if you don’t, and therefore you end up eating a lot of carbs. So we need to add some protein in.
2/ Less oil. Both in terms of cooking off the onions and garlic and from the anchovies quite a lot of oil goes into a traditional putannscea. A tablespoon of oil is over 100 calories so if you are trying to control the calories of the dish, this is a key change you need to make. And in all honestly, it’s the capers, anchovies and olives that give the dish a great flavour, the oil really doesn’t make much difference to the taste.
3/ More vegetables. Same idea as with adding more protein. Throw some more vegetables into the dish and you will need to less spaghetti to fill you up.
My Healthy Spaghetti Puttanesca Recipe (Serves 2)
Ingredients;
350g firm white fish such as cod.
100g Spaghetti
2 onions
2 carrots
6 anchovy fillets
2 tbsp capers
2 cloves of garlic
Handful of olives – chopped
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
1 tin of passata
Black or cayenne pepper to taste if you like it.
Cooking;
Put the anchovies in a casserole/oven dish on the hob. Dab most of the oil away with kitchen towel, leaving just a little to cook the veg.
Then add the onions, garlic, carrots and cook on low heat for 5 minutes or so.
Add the chopped tomatoes, passata, olives and capers (and cayenne pepper if you like it) and turn the heat up. Pour a bit of water in the tins of tomatoes and put that in as well.
When it comes to the boil out the lid on and put it in the oven at 150 Celsius. How long you leave it in there really doesn’t matter. A minimum of half an hour and no more than 2 hours.
(One change to the recipe you could try is having it with squid. Chop the squid into rings and put it in the tomato sauce just before it goes in the oven. If you do this, cook it for at least 90 mins to make sure the squid goes tender.)
Then just bake the cod in the oven 10-15 minutes before you are ready to eat. All the flavour comes from the sauce so a plain white fish is ideal for this dish.
Same with the spaghetti, cook just before serving. If you are being extra good, have it with ‘courgetti’ rather than spaghetti to save yourself the extra calories and carbs.
Then mix the spaghetti/courgetti with the sauce, fish goes on top and serve!
Calories Breakdown
I worked it out on my fitness pal to make sure it was accurate.
560 calories per person with spaghetti.
410 calories per person with courgette.
Conclusion – Healthy Spaghetti Puttanesca
This is just one example of how you can make winter warming dishes really healthy. So never use the excuse that you ‘need’ to eat more carbs/calories because it is winter ever again!
Visit the main page of my website here; Complete Fitness 4 Life.