Buitoni presents.......Chicken and Mushroom Ravioli with Marsala Sauce

First of all, thank you to JL Health and to Alex for following my blog!

And thank you to Foodbuzz and Buitoni for allowing me to sample a new product, Buitoni Riserva Chicken and Mushroom Ravioli with Marsala sauce. As a member of the Tastemakers program I was sent a coupon to try a box of Buitoni's newest product, Frozen Meals for Two.



We aren't big on frozen foods here at Squirrel Head Manor but when offered a chance to try a new product, free of charge, and a good quality product such as Buitoni - I was on board with it!

The accompanying letter with my coupon made some recommendations to add a salad, round out the meal. Rather than just cook (boil) my prize, I thought we'd add more than a plain salad.

Start with a brothy vegetable soup for course one........



Next, we had bruschetta with olive tapenade, avocado with lime and diced tomatoes.......and gently sipped a Chardonnay we'd never had. Why not make the entire meal a taste experiment and see whats a keeper :-) We'd never had this olive tapenade either and oh yeah...it will be a returning appetizer....it was so good.





While we supped on the wine and bruschetta our new Buitoni meal was busy boiling away on the stove top. This in itself was unusual for us as we are generally active participants with the prep of the meal.



Along with the bruschetta we had a salad that I mostly picked at, saving it to have with the ravioli. Greens with cucumber, a few cherry tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes and portabella muchrooms. To tenderize the portabella mushrooms I chopped them and added them to a hot saucepan with the sun-dried tomatoes, letting the olive oil of the tomatoes soak in. When this mixture was very warm and soft, I gently placed it across the top of the cold salad. Sun dried tomato dressing was a natural with this salad.

Here is the salad before the dressing was drizzled over...looked better afterwards but I forgot to snap a photo :-(



The pasta was delicious but the serving size (it's called Complete Meal for Two) is very deceptive. We could have easily fed another person with the portions. Now we did have several courses or sides but still.......

I placed five fat raviolis on each of our plates, I could only eat three, Doug ate four. That left four other untouched raviolis and a bit of sauce. The sauce is much darker than my Marsala sauce however this did not take away from the taste.



It couldn't have been easier.....just boil water and drop the sauce bag in, add the ravioli for 5 minutes more.

Getting the sauce out of the package after being in boiling water wasn't too big a challenge, in spite of my inherent clumsiness. I clipped the top of the package and poured the sauce into a serving bowl so we could ladle as much, or as little, sauce as we pleased.

Served with bread, warm olive oil and herbs and a inexpensive Cupcake Chardonnay.



Overall, the entire meal was good. In my honest opinionon, I enjoyed Buitoni's Riserva in the cold case much more. I wrote about that HERE

One of my concerns, from a health consciousness point of view, is the sodium per serving. Looking at the side panel with nutritional information you'll see it's 530 calories per serving with 20 grams of fat and a whooping 1140 mg of sodium per serving.

Would you be eating something like this everyday? No, probably not. But it would be a nice thing to have in your freezer if you were in a rush after work, had someplace else or something to do immediately after dinner, or were just tired and wanted an easy yet flavorful dinner.

Buitoni is still high on my list of products names I seek out in the grocery store, But next time I would probably choose their fresh pastas from the cold case. Just my opinion.

That being said, thank you Foodbuzz and Buitoni for allowing me to try out a new product!!


If you are interested in other recipes where I used Buitoni, check these out!

Beef Tortelli Soup
Creamy Seafood Pasta
Shrimp Scampi
Quattro Formaggi Agnolotti