Friday, June 18, 2010

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

11 comments:

  1. F**king Foodbuzz! They don't send us diddly squat up here in Canada, even though we can sign up for the program. It's very, very annoying!

    ReplyDelete
  2. You definitely brought the ravoli up a few notches with yoru brothy soup, salad and bruschetta. Looks like a fine meal.

    I agree with you. I think I would stick with the fresh pastas.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sounds like a good meal for when you don't have time or don't feel like cooking. Of course, it would be perfect for me and hubby while I made something else for the kids. They wouldn't eat mushrooms anyway. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love the bruschetta. I would also agree about using this only in an extreme need for fast dinners seeing that the sodium is so very high. You can't go wrong with fresh. Still, it does lokk delilcious.

    ReplyDelete
  5. WC - I was told it's because some of the vendors target US audiences - BUT...if I get something that isn't frozen, I will share it with you. I DID pitch Canadian audiences for Old Bay spices...

    Velva - Love the fresh pastas. This would be good for a hurried day though, I'm now off to your blog to see if you've put up photos of Provence!

    Janel - definitley a good backup. Tristan didn't like mushrooms when he was a kid but I could sometimes sneak them in.

    Carla - Oh me too, bruschetta is so easy and tasty. And I agree with you - the sodium content is way more than I ought to having. On occassion I guess it's OK.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sounds wonderful and definitely worth having on hand for a quick meal. The sodium is definitely very high! The fat content too but I'm praying that isn't all saturated fat, that's what I watch more than anything.

    Thanks for stopping by. One of these days life will slow down a bit and I can get back to blogging on a regular basis - for now, back to my blog break ::sigh::

    ReplyDelete
  7. Awesome review! I'm not much for premade meals either, but I concede they are nice to have on hand for those busy days. I love how you really went to town serving it as a complete meal!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Tina,
    I just wanted to stop by and say hi and THANK YOU for checking in on me a number of times...

    it's very sweet and did not go by unnoticed even if I didn't get back to you right away...

    I love tapenade...I make my own sometimes. YUM.

    best to you.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Joanne - Thanks! I wanted to round it out and it was fun to plan around the frozen meal.

    MonicaJane - I was worried about you but I know how it is, time gets away, things to attend to....glad to see you posting :-)

    ReplyDelete
  10. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  11. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete

Welcome and thank you so much for visiting. If I don't answer you here I will get back to you on your blog. Also have had to switch to approving comments due to some SPAM lately. Alas...

It's been a good run...........