18-year-old Sofiia attempts to cook two popular online recipes
While waiting for my girlfriend Aurora to finish cooking for us for probably the millionth time, I asked myself a question: why don’t I cook for once? It’s true that I’ve never tried to cook a whole meal, and boiling sausages and noodles doesn’t count. Also, I will be leaving for uni in just a few months… isn’t this the perfect time to start practicing cooking?
So, I picked out two popular TikTok recipes to kickstart my cooking journey. Here are the two recipes I tried out: baked feta pasta as the main and Japanese cheesecake for dessert. I considered them quite easy to do and delicious, which is why I chose them.
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Unfortunately, we were missing some of the key ingredients, so we went to the nearest grocery shop to pick them up. Thankfully, we had olive oil, black pepper and pasta at home. We could not find any fresh basil leaves, which is why we decided to buy them ground in a little bottle as a seasoning, and instead of red pepper flakes we added some similar spices — curry and pepper ones.
Since these recipes are quite simple, you can tailor them to your preferences. Especially with the Japanese cheesecake, where there are many variations. For that, Aurora chose honey as her sweetener of choice.
Since my girlfriend goes to uni and lives in a rented apartment, we also had to buy a special dish for the pasta.
The initial plan was to serve this for my girlfriend as a romantic Friday night dinner, which meant that I had to prepare the cheesecake beforehand as it is recommended to leave it in the fridge overnight.
To be fair, it was the easiest part of the whole process: first, I poured all the Greek yoghurt into a bowl, then added the cookies and topped it all off with honey. The cookies were a bit too long for the bowl, but I figured it was fine and that, if needed, I could break them the next day.
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Sofiia’s Japanese cheesecake, with the biscuits poking out of the yoghurt.
I was sceptical about this bowl of yoghurt and cookies tasting like actual cheesecake, but we decided to hope for the best.
The following afternoon, I started preparing to cook the pasta. I washed the new dish and started preheating the oven. Then, I put the pasta to boil (with the help of my girlfriend, of course). I put the tomatoes, block of feta cheese and four garlic cloves into the dish, drowning them in olive oil.
Following the recipe instructions, we put the dish into the oven for the tomatoes to soften and the cheese to turn golden. For us it took a bit longer than the expected ten minutes, but the result looked and smelled fantastic.
The next step was to crush the tomatoes and mix them with the cheese. At this point, I started suspecting that I hadn’t bought enough tomatoes. The mixture looked pinkish-white, while it was supposed to be more orange-coloured. But Aurora said not to worry because she likes the taste of cheese anyway. So I didn’t worry, since she is the more experienced chef.
I added the cooked pasta to the mixture of cheese and tomatoes, and started mixing. Once again, this was very straightforward. I finished by sprinkling everything with some pepper and basil, and the pasta was ready.
Since dinnertime was approaching, I set the table and we started eating. Finally, I took the cheesecake out of the fridge. It looked a bit strange, and the biscuits had got softer and looked rather wobbly, but I decided to leave them. Nonetheless, it did taste exactly like a cheesecake, which still surprises me to this day.
The final pasta dish, as cooked by Sofiia.
After the meal, I conducted a short interview with Aurora. She said: “We didn’t have the exact ingredients, but it was still good because we made it work. Even though the pasta did have a very strong cheese taste, I didn’t mind it. Also, I didn’t expect the cheesecake to actually taste like one!”
I would recommend both of these recipes as they are easy to make and delicious. Next time, though, I would buy more cherry tomatoes and maybe even experiment with different types of cheese.
This was my first step in learning to cook, and I’d consider it quite successful. It felt very nice to be able to do this for my partner. Not only that, but exploring something new always feels exciting and opens many possibilities.
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