Are you always hungry for feta pasta baked?

It is a fairly simple recipe, even for the most nervous cooks: cherry tomatoes, peppers and a block of feta in olive oil. Cook in the oven. Mix the cooked pasta, basil and garlic.

Simple was exactly what Jenni Hayrinen, a Finnish food blogger, was looking for when she whipped the creamy and salty dish in 2019. “I was really hungry,” she said. “I want cooked feta.”

The recipe from Ms. Hayrinen and similar that another Finnish blogger, Tiiu Puranen, shared in 2018 stimulated an online phenomenon in Finland. But the recipe may have remained local, if not for some Finnish travelers who have delighted the trend to an American culinary blogger, Mackenzie Smith.

“I just remember adding the pasta, taking a bite,” said Ms. Smith. “I was like: it’s really good. Why is it so good?

In January 2021, Ms. Smith downloaded a practical video for the Tiktok and Instagram recipe. The coronavirus pandemic had transformed home kitchens into a source of entertainment, and with restaurants always closed or offering limited service in many places, the kitchen at home has always dominated many evenings.

What happened to suffocate it: the recipe exploded on the internet, accumulating a legion of fans who included culinary bloggers and IA influencers. Some said it was the best pasta dish they’ve ever tried. Others said they added it to their weekly dinner rotation. The media threshing has even led an increase in feta sales: the shelves in certain stores have been temporarily emptied, and the FETA has become one of the best research terms in the Instacart grocery application.

The oven feta has long been a basic Greek aperitif, but why has the addition of linguine, Penne or Rigatoni invited such devotion?

“Visually, it’s emblematic, right?” Ms. Smith said. “This first sang in this melting feta, it’s satisfactory.” The dish offered a high touch to comforting food at a time when going to restaurants was at best a challenge, or impossible, she said. It attributes social excitement around the dish to help it and the others, to go through a difficult period: “He cemented his place in American culture,” she said.

More than four years later, Ms. Smith said that her feta baked pasta recipe was still among the most popular on her website.

“It changed my life. I paid for my mortgage, which was only the craziest thing, “she said. Her feelings are complicated by the fact that the recipe was not hers, and she took care to give credit to her Finnish creators. “Honestly, I feel so lucky to be part of it,” she said.

In Finland, Ms. Hayrinen said on February 4 “day of the feta pasta cooked in the oven”. Each year, she republishes a series of videos of cooking dishes, each with the piece of signing feta in a shiny nest of tomatoes.

“It was as if it was a sort of shared social experience,” she said, reflecting on the height of the craze of feta pasta cooked in the oven. He understood a fan she considered the ultimate gourmet victory: Gordon Ramsay, who called the “magnetizing” trend in an interview in 2022 with People.

“This is one of my greatest achievements, because I don’t think he loves anything,” she said. “I can retire now.”