Pasta with Roasted Tomato, Orange & Olive Sauce

I've been craving pasta, so - as promised - here's a recipe I found (using my Epicurious mobile app) that features oranges, both the juice and zest.

I love the sweet and savory mix of this dish, and roasting the veggies add so much depth compared with using canned or uncooked fresh tomatoes. Deglazing the cookie sheets with the orange juice is a brilliant move. You scrape up all the browned bits from the pan, which yields even more flavor! And, the orange flavor really comes through, fresh and unexpected in a dish like this.

All in all, this recipe is a great go-to for a quick/light/easy/meatless weeknight meal. To add some protein, we used whole wheat pasta. Also, the original recipe called for black olives, but we had green ones in the pantry so I used them instead. This recipe serves four, and here's how I made it:

Nonstick spray or vegetable oil
8 plum tomatoes, cut into large chunks
1 large onion, cut into large chunks
6-8 garlic cloves, minced
2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp orange peel, grated
Salt and freshly cracked black pepper, to taste½ cup orange juice, freshly squeezed with pulp (for extra flavor)

1 box of shaped pasta (I used 12 ounces of rotini)
¾ cup fresh basil, minced
¼ cup green olives, roughly chopped
¼ cup parmesan cheese, grated

Preheat to 400°F. Grease two rimmed baking sheets, spreading one with the tomatoes and the other with the onion. Coat each batch of veggies with 1 Tbsp oil, then sprinkle each batch with the garlic, orange peel, salt and pepper. Try to make sure the garlic is well oiled, since that can burn easily, or roast some in advance and use that instead.


Roast veggies till they're tender with nice browning, stirring occasionally. The onions will take about 20-30 minutes and the tomatoes with take about 45 minutes. Immediately pour ¼ cup orange juice over the veggies on the hot sheets, scraping up the browned bits as you go. Set them aside till you're ready to combine them with the pasta.


Cook your pasta to al denté, leaving it with a little bite. Drain the pasta, then put it back in the hot pot over medium heat. (Reserve a little pasta water, in case the dish is dry once you combine the ingredients.) Add the tomatoes, onions, basil and olives to the pasta. Stir till warmed through, adding pasta water if needed. Sprinkle with cheese and serve!