Bowties Florentine

Well, it's only been two months since the last post. To ease back into the new recipe kick (and I promise, there will be a lot of them in the coming weeks!) I started with an easy recipe from kraftfoods.com. Their recipes are usually pretty good, and always easy... but usually bland. Lets see how we do with this one.INGREDIENTS

3 cups (8 oz.) bow tie pasta, uncooked

1 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch chunks

1 pkg. (8 oz.) PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, cubed

1 cup DI GIORNO Shredded Asiago Cheese

1-1/2 cups milk

1 pkg. (10 oz.) frozen chopped spinach, thawed, drained

Suggestion: Garlic, fresh ground pepper, and more garlic will add some additional flavor to these rather blah ingredients.

DIRECTIONS

COOK pasta as directed on package. Meanwhile, cook and stir chicken in large nonstick skillet on medium heat 8 to 10 minutes or until cooked through. Remove from heat; cover to keep warm.

PLACE cream cheese, Asiago cheese and milk in medium saucepan; cook on low heat until cream cheese is completely melted and mixture is well blended. Add spinach; cook until heated through, stirring frequently.

DRAIN pasta; place in large bowl. Add chicken and cream cheese mixture; toss to coat.

VERDICT

If you like spinach... this is your dish. Wow, that's a lot of spinach! I only ended up using half of the cheese-spinach sauce on the pasta, and it was still way too much. You can definitely cut the sauce recipe in half.

As for suggestions, I peppered the chicken before cooking it in the skillet. I added garlic too, but it didn't seem to sink in. I think if I did this again I'd cook the spinach in a skillet with some garlic and pepper before adding it to the cheese mix. The fresh-from-the-box-frozen-spinach taste is pretty strong and I think it would be better to be cooked a bit first.

But overall, not a bad dish. Definitely quick and easy.