Recipe
Baked feta with thyme honey and cracked pepper
Six-month feta bakes without collapsing. A younger, wetter cheese turns to soup in the same dish.
Recipe · 10 min · serves 2
August tomatoes, one slab of feta, nothing else
This is the whole argument for buying cheese in a piece rather than a tub of crumbles. Four ingredients, and the cheese has to be able to stand up on its own.
Ingredients
- 600 g ripe tomatoes, mixed sizes
- 200 g barrel-aged feta, in one slab
- 3 tbsp cold-pressed olive oil
- 1 tsp dried oregano, crushed between the palms
- Cracked black pepper
- Bread, to finish the plate
Never refrigerate the tomatoes. Cold flattens the aromatics and you cannot get them back.
Method
- 01
Cut the tomatoes into irregular wedges — different shapes hold the oil differently. Leave them on the plate for five minutes so they release a little juice.
- 02
Lift the feta from its brine, pat it dry and set the slab whole across the tomatoes. Do not crumble it; the contrast between the cold dense cheese and the soft fruit is the dish.
- 03
Pour the oil over the cheese so it runs down into the tomato juice, then crush the oregano over the top and crack pepper generously.
- 04
Add no salt. Serve at room temperature with bread, and use the bread to take up what is left on the plate.
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