Wanting to make something quick and easy that tastes delicious, I felt ready to try a home cook’s personal recipe.
Her name is Ayeh Manfre, and she’s gained over 872,000 followers on Instagram for her straightforward and tasty vegetarian dishes.
Ayeh said her baked feta pasta “has the perfect flavour combination with a mix of mushrooms, onion, garlic, spinach and topped with pine nuts for a little crunch” – and she’s right.
The addition of toasted pine nuts really elevated this dish for me, making each mouthful moreish.
While feta cheese is the star ingredient, I used the similar-looking and tasting salad cheese, although I’d definitely recommend sticking with Ayeh’s recommendation of feta cheese.
Baked feta pasta with mushrooms recipe
- Prep: eight minutes
- Cooks in: 25 minutes
Ingredients
- 400g short pasta
- 500g mixed mushrooms
- One red onion
- Six garlic cloves
- 160g block of feta cheese
- Extra virgin olive oil
- One pinch of dried oregano
- 100g baby spinach
- Four sprigs of thyme
- Handful of toasted pine nuts
- Squeeze of lemon (optional)
While Ayeh used casarecce short pasta, I used penne, but fusilli, cavatappi and gemelli are good substitutions.
As for the herbs, I used dried herbs but, as always, fresh herbs are more aromatic.
Method
Preheat the oven to 200C. Slice mushrooms and onion and place into an oven dish. Add garlic cloves – whole in their skin – along with the fresh (or dried) thyme leaves.
Drizzle over the olive oil and mix to coat well. Add the block of feta in the middle of the dish and place all the mushroom mixture around it (and make sure you can see all the garlic cloves clearly).
Season the feta with oregano and a drizzle of olive oil, then bake in the oven for 25 minutes until the mushrooms are golden and the feta has softened.
Meanwhile, as the feta and mushroom bake in the oven, cook the pasta in salted, boiled water according to pack instructions.
When the feta and mushroom are cooked, remove the skin from the garlic cloves and, using a fork, mash the garlic cloves in the oven dish.
Mix the garlic, mushroom and feta together, then mix in spinach and the cooked pasta with a good splash of pasta water.
Add toasted pine nuts just before serving, and lemon can be squeezed on the dish if you so wish.
For those wanting a meaty addition, chicken can also be added to the delicious meal.
