Changing up the ratio of ingredients makes all the difference.
It was so popular that grocery stores worldwide sold out of feta cheese!
My hot take is that the dish, while eye-catching on the gram, was not very good.
Simply Recipes / Photo Illustration by Wanda Abraham / Getty Images / Molly Adams
To me, feta is perfect in its natural state, preferably cubed or crumbled.
Its not meant to melt into a sauce.
The flavor profile of the recipe, however, made a lot of sense.
Simply Recipes / Molly Adams
Ina Garten has known this to be true for a long time.
This recipe sets the bar for pasta salad quite high.
I like to use tricolor fusilli, but any short pasta shape will do.
Now, for the mix-ins!
The recipe calls for a pound of tomatoes, so they have to be flavorful.
In the summer, I use tomatoes on the vine.
You could scale this down to eight ounces if it works better for your budget and taste.
Now, the fun stuff!
The recipe gets a burst of briny umami flavor from sundried tomatoes and Kalamata olives.
They add pops of saltiness that make this salad incredibly hard to stop eating.
Last but not least, there’s the dressing.
This is where things start to get interesting.
One thing to note: this dish contains a lot of very salty ingredients.
To prevent over-seasoning, I use slightly less salt to cook the pasta than I normally would.
Also, I hold off on adding extra salt to the dressing until I taste everything mixed together.
If you find the salad too salty, add a little fresh lemon juice to tone things down.
