Around 2002, 2003 at the latest, you’d find on tables at any parties wherever three or more aunties or office workers, or both, were gathered: a gleaming white slab of Philadelphia cream cheese on a plate dripping with almost neon sweet chilli sauce, like blood on Fargo snow. Eventually the good people at Philadelphia realised they had a good thing going here and produced their own line of pre-soused tubs of cream cheese and sauce ready to be upended, but it wasn’t the same — the organic gathering of inorganic ingredients and the trend passing from gathering to gathering whether by whisper network or osmosis was the point.

Today’s recipe takes strong inspiration from that sacred and outdated but still-delicious dish. It also draws inspiration from the Korean dish of cold silken tofu draped in sizzling — or not — quickly-made chilli oil, a spectacular concept that’s particularly lifesaving in high summer when the chilled, satiny tofu provides the same relief as a damp cloth to the forehead.

This culinary homage sees a toothily white block of feta in place of the respective cream cheese and tofu; crowned with chilli oil-sluiced, buttery-soft pine nuts and toasted fennel seeds. I used gochugaru because I love its lemony-smoky-horseradishy heat and its almost glittering red hue, but use whatever chilli flakes you have around. Don’t skip the fennel seeds, unless your opposition to them is storied and longstanding, as they cut a brisk path through the weighty richness of the oil, nuts, and feta, and toasting brings out a mellowness you might not have deemed them quite capable of conveying.

The smooth, yoghurty tang of feta coupled with the delicate heat of the sizzling-then-subsiding chilli oil is magic, with the brash saltiness offset by the richness and the hint of honey sweetness, plus those aforementioned hardworking fennel seeds. Sink your knife into the feta’s fudgily yielding surface, break off a shard twinkling with oil and eat it with crackers; you really don’t need to even invite people over for this, by which I mean, don’t be afraid to make it just for yourself. Especially as leftovers keep well in the fridge (and are terrific crumbled over roasted potatoes). It’s an easy breezy starter or snack for entertaining people (including, as established, just yourself) this Christmas, New Years and throughout the summer. Despite needing to use the stovetop briefly, it’s still pretty effortless and I maintain — perhaps in a way that I ought to be talked out of — that if you’re just using a pan to toast nuts and heat up olive oil you basically don’t need to wash it, a swipe with a kitchen paper towel should do the trick.

If you’re after more snacky-starter-y type dishes, I recommend this M’tabbal Qarae, this Avocado, Labaneh, and Preserved Lemon Dip, my Roasted Cherry Tomatoes with Cherry Tomato Dressing and this White Bean Mash with Garlic Aioli. And — whether your approach to the Christmas hoidays is something of rabid glee or weary trepidation, I hope it’s as relaxed and filled with good food and good people as time and physics will allow.

Feta with Chilli Oil Pine Nuts

I know I’ve made it look complicated with those lengthy instructions below but I promise it’s significantly more low-effort than it reads, and every bit as delicious as it sounds. Taking reference from early-2000s soiree snacks and chilled tofu with chilli oil, this isn’t aiming to be superior to its parents but is instead a joyful addition to the stuff-on-stuff food genre.

• 1 x 200g block of feta
• 1 teaspoon fennel seeds
• 2 tablespoons pine nuts
• 1-2 teaspoons gochugaru or chilli flakes of your choice
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

1: Unwrap your block of feta and sit it on the plate or tray one which you’re planning to serve it.

2: Gently toast the teaspoon of fennel seeds in a pan until just fragrant — they burn easily, so don’t turn your back on them — and tip them into a heatproof bowl. Keeping the heat on, tip the two tablespoons of pine nuts into the now-empty pan and again, toast them till fragrant and lightly golden, then tip them on top of the fennel seeds. To the same bowl of pine nuts, add the teaspoon or two of gochugaru or your chosen chilli flakes to taste, along with the teaspoon of minced garlic, the two teaspoons of soy sauce, and the teaspoon of honey. Don’t worry about mixing it just yet.

3: In that same pan, heat the two tablespoons of olive oil until very hot — you can test this by sticking the handle of a wooden spoon into the oil, and if small bubbles cling to it, it’s ready. My stovetop runs hot so I turned it off and the residual heat in the pan was enough to get the olive oil toasty. Carefully pour this hot oil into the bowl — it will bubble up excitedly and then subside — and turn your oven off if you haven’t already.

4: Stir the chilli oil together and spoon it over the block of feta. Provide a couple of knives and a selection of crackers and you’re good to go.

This serves an indefinite quantity but this would work for four people as a snack or starter with other things on the table, or you could put it out at a party where significantly more people are in attendance and presumably provide a proportionate amount of other food on that same table. Or just make it for yourself and keep any leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge.

Notes: See here for a vegan feta recipe if you’re after it; you could use other nuts or seeds instead but pine nuts really stand alone here; you could also add herbs — rosemary or snipped chives would be great — or extra bits and pieces, or more or less of anything, whatever your tastebuds suggest.

music lately:

S.P.Q.R by This Heat. It sounds like The Sorcerer’s Apprentice if the sentient objects were marching forks instead of broomsticks, I can’t describe it in a more lucid fashion than that, I’m afraid.

Om Rama by Alice Coltrane, if you’re idly musing along the lines of “hmm I wouldn’t mind feeling all the euphoria the world possesses both enveloping me and speaking to me from the inside out and existing in ecstatic harmony with the universe”, and you want it to happen quicklly, you could try listening to this song.

Pity the Child from Chess, as performed by Adam Pascal and his stainless steel lungs. This song strings you along for a good minute and a half, tip-toeing through a gently miserable lullaby before letting loose and rewarding your patience with a more bombastic flavour of misery. I don’t know why it’s never occurred to me before but this could, beat for beat, word for word, 100% be a Pink Floyd song (I’m talking The Wall-era paternally-motivated gloominess or even Welcome to the Machine or Have a Cigar), however few people can do what Pascal does in those killer final notes.