Ok so by now everyone must have heard about the viral Tik Tok baked feta pasta. If you haven’t, you’ve been living under a rock (which is fine too).

It’s basically a super easy recipe where you just put a block of feta in a baking tin, add some cherry tomatoes and herbs and bake it for about half an hour in the oven. Then you mix it all up and you have a pasta sauce.

Now, it is a very straighforward recipe, but there are a few things you should bear in mind when making it. First up: the cheese. Lots of people (including me), find the sauce on the sour side. Yes it could be the tomatoes, but it’s more likely the kind of feta cheese you use. If you buy a good quality goat’s or sheep’s feta, it is likely to be sour. So, if you prefer a less sour taste, try to find a ‘salad cheese’, which looks like feta, but which is actually mixed with cow’s milk. This will have a more buttery taste, less sour.

Secondly, I find that the sauce needs a bit more liquid to get the right texture. So, best is you reserve a few cups of cooking water from your gnocchi (or pasta) and add that to the mashed sauce. If you drained all the water from the pasta and forgot to reserve some for the sauce, don’t worry and just use hot water instead.

So, with these two tips in mind, you’re good to go and make the easiest pasta in the world. I’ve made mine with heart-shaped gnocchi for Valentine’s day, but I would generally recommend using spaghetti or penne pasta with this sauce.