Chicken Spinach Artichoke Pesto Pasta (Quick Take)

A simple & fast skillet supper with sautéed chicken breast, fresh spinach, prepared pesto and marinated artichoke hearts. Six ingredients, about 20 minutes, and you've got a tasty meal.

Updated in 2015 with new photos!

If you want to prepare a special meal that appears as if you've given a lot of thought to it but in fact you just realized that tonight was The Night and need to pull something out of your ear, read on.

I had a chicken breast, a bunch of spinach from the farm share, and a lot of cans of cream of chicken soup because they were a good price so I stocked up.  Yes, I use canned soup.  I tried making my own but it didn't come out as well as this stuff.  Everything in moderation.  While looking for inspiration for dinner, I decided to read the recipe on the can. In the surprise of the century, the recipe called for mixing the can of soup with pesto to make a sauce.  Hey, you know I've got pesto in the freezer!  I could make that recipe!

Not content to merely follow the recipe, I decided to boost the veggie content with my farm share spinach and some marinated artichokes.  I think I was in a race to see how fast I could empty a giant Costco-sized jar.  I did it in about a week, between pizzas, dips, and this.  New record.

This was fast and very delicious, if you are older than 14 and love the taste of artichokes.  The kids ate everything but the artichokes.  If you were going meatless I'd sub mushrooms for the chicken and use the soup of your choice.

2015 Update: I used my immersion blender to chop the artichoke hearts and combine with the pesto & soup. I also forgot to tear up the spinach--it was so tender--so I blended some of the cooked spinach up in the sauce, too. Kids ate everything. I kept the process photos from 2013:

Chicken, Spinach, Artichoke and Pesto Pasta

Ingredients

• 3 cups noodles (I used egg noodles)
• 1 BSCB (boneless skinless chicken breast), cubed
• 1 large bunch spinach, well-washed, torn into small pieces (see note below)
• 2 cubes put up pesto (about 1/3 cup prepared pesto)
• 1 can cream of chicken soup (or your homemade equivalent, and please share if you love your recipe)
• 1 cup marinated artichoke hearts, chopped

Instructions

1. Preheat your pretty purple pot filled with salted water over high heat. When the water is boiling, cook the noodles according to package directions.  Drain and set aside.  
2. Preheat a large skillet over medium heat.  
3. Add a turn of oil and sauté the chicken cubes until lightly browned, about 8-10 minutes for me.
4. Add the spinach and cook until it gives up its water and wilts, about 5 minutes for me.  
5. Toss in the pesto, soup, and artichoke hearts into the skillet.  Mix well, heat through.  
6. Stir in the pasta and serve.

Note:  If you are using winter farm share spinach, it's much tougher than a bag of baby spinach.  I rip out the stems and feed them to the composting pigs (they are growing big and strong with all the spinach ribs). If I just had a bag of baby spinach I'd toss them in un-torn.

This post is shared with the Creative HomeAcre Hop, Food on Friday, and the Farmgirl Friday Blog Fest at Let This Mind Be In You.

For more recipes using artichoke hearts, please see my Artichoke Recipes Collection. For more recipes using spinach, please see my Spinach Recipes Collection. These are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating seasonally from the farm share and farmer's market. Want more ideas? Follow me on Pinterest! On Facebook! On Dasher! On . . . oh never mind.