Ravioli with Pesto and Chicken - A quick and easy dinner for those hectic nights!

Our family loves pesto, so you will always find a container of refrigerated pesto at our house. I not only like to make meals with it but if I don't have fresh basil for a tomato sauce, I'll put a few tablespoons of pesto in its place. We make numerous combinations of this recipe depending on what we have in the pantry. On any given night it could be pesto with chicken, broccoli and ziti or pesto with bow ties, spinach and pine nuts.

When I got home the other night, the last thing I wanted to do was cook. Knowing I had chicken in the refrigerator, I came across some ravioli and the light bulb went on...chicken, ravioli and pesto. It evolved into more than that, but here was the start. This recipe was easy and I will say better than our traditional mixtures. The new ingredient was canned cherry tomatoes. We had found them at Salumeria Italiana in the North End, but before you travel into Boston, check out the International sections of your local supermarket. The dish was delicious blending the flavors of cheese ravioli, chicken, pesto and cherry tomatoes. The nice part to this meal was it took about 30 minutes to put together.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1-1 1/2 pounds of chicken (breast meat), sliced into 1/4 inch slices

1 - 20 ounce container of refrigerated cheese ravioli

1 - 7 ounce container of refrigerated basil pesto

1 - 14-15 ounce can of cherry tomatoes (you can use a can of diced tomatoes in their juice)

1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese

1/2 cup of pine nuts, toasted

Preparation:

1. Heat olive oil in a saute pan over medium-high heat. Place chicken in pan and saute until no longer pink.

2. Add pesto and tomatoes to chicken, reduce heat and bring to a simmer.

3. Cook ravioli according to instructions.

4. When ravioli is done, mix with chicken mixture, add parmesan cheese and pine nuts.

5. Serve with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese.