I was anti-TikTok for a long time. My assumption was that it was a constant stream of 17-year-olds making dancing videos and trying to get famous. While this is partially correct, there are a lot of sides to TikTok that I was unaware of. The content on your personalized feed, or For You Page, as it’s titled on the app, can range from sports videos to comedy sketches to singing, and if you end up where I am, to food TikTok. For about three weeks this winter, my whole feed contained different kitchen hacks, gadgets, or recipes, which gave me a lot of good ideas for meals to make for my family.
Recently, most of the videos on my feed were a range of people testing out a pasta recipe that became so popular in Finland that they ran out of feta cheese. I’m not sure how reliable that information is, considering my only source is Tiktok, but you get the idea. I took it upon myself to test out just how good this recipe really is. Let me tell you, I was not disappointed.
Creamy Feta Pasta
Based on the recipe by food blogger Jenni Häyrinen.
1 package of cherry tomatoes
2 Tbsp. olive oil
Salt, pepper, fresh basil to taste
2 to 3 cloves of fresh garlic, minced
1 block feta cheese
1 box of cooked, drained pasta
1 cup of pasta water
Preheat the oven to 400°. Get a 9×13, or similarly sized, baking dish and put the tomatoes in. Coat them with olive oil, salt, pepper, basil and the minced garlic. Give that a little stir, and put the feta block right in the middle. Bake this until the feta becomes melty and a nice brown on top, which will be about 30 minutes.
I’ve seen many variations of making the sauce from the baked ingredients. The two most popular would be either putting the contents of the baking dish into a food processor and blending until the sauce is smooth, or mixing with a fork and crushing the tomatoes along the way for a chunkier sauce. Either option is bound for greatness, but I went for the fork method out of laziness.
In either recipe, you can use the saved pasta water to loosen the sauce, but it’s an optional step. After you have the sauce together, pour it over the cooked pasta, and garnish with fresh basil.
