You could halve your tomatoes so they break down more - I did this with half of them, but the original recipe calls for them intact. You could add rice or farro instead of pasta or chickpeas.

The recipe is incredibly flexible - you could add some thin onion slices instead of in addition to the garlic you could use more chili pepper or less you could use a softer chèvre instead of feta you can roast the tomatoes longer, until they’re saucier. As a person who is always in need of lunch inspiration that’s not whatever my kids didn’t finish, this was perfect for yesterday, a day I grabbed the ingredients in the morning - our grocery store was suspiciously low on feta and cherry tomatoes I’m absolutely here for it - and we scooped it throughout the afternoon onto focaccia ( this, halved and baked thin in a 9×13-inch pan), so grateful for the fresh idea. I think it’s absolutely perfect, however, with beans, especially chickpeas, which hold up well to this heartier preparation. Now please don’t get upset, we all have our things, I just don’t really love feta with pasta, unless it’s a pasta salad, or sometimes orzo. I like that it uses cherry tomatoes, which are obviously not as great in the winter as they are in the summer, but are surprisingly good year-round when roasted. It’s an older recipe (2019 is “old” in TikTok) but it caught on again because tomatoes and feta are timeless. It began with a recipe developed by Finnish food blogger Jenni Häyrinen called “ Uunifetapasta,” which translates to oven-baked feta pasta. So is this baked feta, which is a spin on a baked pasta that’s been going viral the last few weeks. Side parts! Laugh-cry emojis! It’s a whole thing.

Through it, I’ve learned so much about even more ways I can be uncool.

I, um, love TikTok, it’s my favorite time suck. It puts expectations right where they belong - low no, lower, please. I am deeply uncool and I prefer it this way. Listen, this will surprise nobody at all, but I am not trendy.

Tik tok feta pasta salad