Oven Feta Pasta - Uunifetapasta

Uunifetapasta was introduced by Jenni Häyrinen in her food blog https://liemessa.fi/ in 2019. She was leaving her successful job at Nvidia as an office manager to become a full-time food blogger with good success. The Uunifetapasta became an instant hit in Finland and in many other countries. I warmly recommend visiting her blog for modern Finnish Recipes, check out the SuomiLOVE section. Of course many versions of the recipe evolved. Here is mine:

Ingredients:

350 g Pasta

250 g Feta Cheese

½ - 3/ dl Olive oil (the tasty one)

½ tsp Red Chili flakes

1 tsp Pesto (optional)

3 Garlic cloves  300 g Cherry tomatoes

Black pepper

Fresh basil

Instructions:

Cut the tomatoes in half, cube the feta cheese, cut the garlic very fine. Put it all in a big bowl with the chili flakes, olive oil and black pepper. Now time to get your hands dirty and mix the whole thing well, so that everything it covered properly by oil. Olive oil is good for your skin. Put it onto on oven tray, you may have to add a bit more oil to make sure it does not stick to the tray.

Shove the tray into the oven in about 180 C (no need to preheat). Put on a big pot with salted water and cook the pasta. About the time the pasta is ready, the oven tomatoes will look a bit wrinkled and the feta gets brown edges. Note that this depends a bit on how fast you manage to cook the pasta and how fast your oven heats up.

Strain the cooked pasta and throw the pasta onto the oven tray. Mix all thing properly, so that the pasta is nicely covered in the flavours.

Cut the basil into a lot of fine strips and throw it on top of the pasta-mix.