The first Friday of the month is reserved for recipes. You can see additional First Friday Food posts here.
The Reason:
I haven’t talked about our garden much this year, but gardens mean tomatoes. It’s a little early yet, but I want to get this one out there so you have everything ready to go as soon as tomato season starts to pick up. (Shhh, this is so good, we even sometimes make it with tasteless store-bought tomatoes!)
The Journey:
The ingredients seem too simple, somehow. I mean, it’s mostly feta, tomatoes, and a red onion. So what, you know? This is absolutely one of those where the sum is greater than its parts. Trust me on this! As good as those things sound, baked all together, they are better.
The feta doesn’t really melt, just gets soft and warm, and delicious…
The thing I like about this is that you can absolutely impress your guests with it as a fancy appetizer, or else just eat it as meal. Or eat it by yourself. A whole 8-ounces of feta, aaaaall to yourself.
Mmmmmm lovely, salty feta.
The Verdict:
It’s really simple to make, only takes one dish, and you don’t even need silverware to eat it. The crackers *are* your silverware. Edible silverware!
The Recipe:
Recipe from Smitten Kitchen (minus the olives!):
- 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 1/4 cup thinly sliced red onion
- 2 tablespoons finely-chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley, divided
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 1 8- to 10-ounce block feta
- In a bowl, mix the tomatoes, olives, onion, garlic, 1 tablespoon of the parsley, oregano, olive oil and a few grinds of pepper.
- Heat oven to 400°F. Place the block of feta in the middle of your dish. Pile the tomato mixture on top of the feta. Bake for 15 minutes.
- The feta will not melt, just warm and soften. Garnish with parsley and serve with crackers; eat immediately. As it cools, the feta will firm up again. We found that the dish could be returned to the oven to soften it again. We did this with leftovers, too.
Shane Halbach 