Greek Baked Feta with Tomato (Feta Psiti me Ntomata)

While feta baked with honey and nuts leans sweet, feta psiti me ntomata takes the same basic idea, a block of feta softened in the oven, and pushes it firmly savoury instead, surrounding the cheese with cherry tomatoes, garlic, chilli and oregano until everything blisters and softens together into a rich, spoonable meze.

This has become a genuinely popular modern staple, the kind of dish that appears constantly on contemporary Greek meze menus alongside older, more traditional plates, precisely because it needs almost no skill and gives a genuinely impressive result for very little active effort.

The tomatoes do real work here, releasing their juices as they blister and combining with the melting feta and olive oil into a light sauce that is genuinely made for mopping up with bread.

Key preparation steps

1. Place a block of feta in a baking dish.
2. Surround with cherry tomatoes, garlic, chilli and oregano.
3. Drizzle generously with olive oil.
4. Bake until the cheese softens and the tomatoes blister.

Assembling the dish

Place a whole block of feta in the centre of a small baking dish, and scatter cherry tomatoes, a few smashed garlic cloves and sliced chilli around it, then sprinkle generously with dried oregano and drizzle everything with a good amount of olive oil.

Baking

Bake in a hot oven for around twenty to twenty-five minutes, until the feta has softened and turned lightly golden in places and the tomatoes have blistered and started to burst, releasing their juices into the oil to form a light sauce.

Serving

Serve straight from the dish while still warm, mashing the feta lightly with a fork so it mixes through the burst tomatoes and oil, with plenty of good bread on the side for mopping up every bit of the sauce.

What matters in this dish