Sorry for the messy bowl picture! As usual when I get a bowl of pasta I want to jump right in so I had already started eating it before I was stopped to take a picture. This is another recipe executed by Sarah in her Thursday night dinners showcase. It was really good.

She found the recipe on a Finnish site which has been all the rage on TikTok. Apparently stores were running out of feta because everyone wanted to make it. I am not sure where she found the English translation but here it is.

Baked feta pasta

Original #uunifetapasta recipe translated into english

for 4 persons

1 lb / 450 g italian durum wheat pasta
1 block (7 oz / 200 g) greek feta cheese
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 red chili pepper
500 g cherry tomatoes
(4 garlic cloves if you wish)
black pepper
salt
bunch of fresh basil leaves

Pour some olive on the bottom of the baking dish. Place the whole feta block on top. Chop the red chili pepper and add on top of feta cheese. Pour more olive oil on top. Place the cherry tomatoes on the sides and roll around in oil. Grind some pepper and season with pinch of salt.

Bake in 400 F / 200 C for 15 minutes in the middle rack. Turn the heat to 440 F / 225 C, move the dish to the upper rack and use the grilling mode for another 10 minutes. Caution! This might cause the fire alarm to go off, mine does that every time 😀

Cook the pasta al dente according to cooking instructions. If you used cherry tomatoes with stems, remove them. The stems are there merely for the instagrammable look, so plein cherry tomatoes will do fine.

Break the feta a bit and mix with tomatoes. Mix the sauce with pasta and add plenty of basil leaves.

Tip!  Garlic goes well with baked feta pasta. To add garlic cut four garlic cloves in half lenghtwise, toss them in same time as the tomatoes and roll in olive oil.

Sarah said she did not use as much oil as the recipe called for. She probably did that for me since I am constantly dieting. She did use quite a lot of cherry tomatoes which were pretty blah when eaten straight from their container but totally came to life when they were baked. Some of the best bits were small pieces of the feta which were browned under the broiler.

Here’s a pretty picture of the dish from the website—

And here it is with the served with the pasta —