This recipe is inspired by a dish from fellow cheese lover, chef and food blogger in the States, MacKenzie Smith, known on Instagram as @grilledcheesesocial. This delicious dish is easy to make, ever so adaptable and above all comforting.
Orzo is a rice grain sized pasta, therefore if you don’t have any, arborio rice should work too. If you’d like to swap out for a different style of the pasta you’ll need to par boil first.
Ingredients (Serves Two)
1x pack 200g Feta cheese
200g Orzo
200g Cherry Tomatoes, halved
3tbsp Olive Oil
3tsp of Chilli Flakes (adjust to taste)
100ml of Red Wine
2x Garlic Cloves (plus extra for the bread if you fancy)
Cracked Black Pepper.
Slightly Stale Bread (for dipping)
1x tbsp of Butter
Sesame seeds or Nigella Seeds
2x Garlic Cloves
Method
- Preheat oven to 200’C.
- Pop the feta (and it’s ‘juices’ from the packet) in the centre of an oven proof dish.
- Scatter the orzo around the feta, making sure there is none on top of the cheese.
- Arrange the tomatoes around the cheese on top of the orzo, making sure they are evenly distributed.
- Drizzle the olive oil and then the wine evenly across the dish.
- Squash the garlic cloves with the back of a knife and cut each into quarters and then drop around the tomatoes.
- Sprinkle with the chilli flakes (adjust to taste) and a few good turns of cracked black pepper. You should need to add any salt as the cheese will have added a good brininess to the dish.
- Pop in the oven for 25 mins.
- If you fancy, take some slightly stale bread (flat breads, crusts or drier sourdoughs work best) and top with dabs of butter, stab with shards of garlic and dust with seeds of your choice.
- After 25 minutes check on your feta and give the tomatoes and pasta a good stir around. The pasta should be al dente at this point. If you feel its still a little firm pop in the oven for another 5 minutes. If the pasta is ready then either serve it up and enjoy or its time for the bread.
- Place the bread topped with butter etc on top of your tomatoes and return to the oven to allow the butter to melt (reviving the bread as well as dripping into the dish below) and the bottom of the bread to soak up some of the oil and roast tomato juices.
- Bake for a further 5 minutes, keeping an eye on the bread to ensure that the bread doesn’t burn.
