I've cooked plenty of whole chickens and I think it's a great way to easily fix a whole bird. It's very simple and you can place herbs and lemons inside the chicken for extra flavor. But my favorite way to fix a whole chicken is to spatchcock it - to butterfly it. There's a couple of reason why I prefer this method. First, I love dark meat and when you butterfly a chicken, the thighs get nice and crispy. When you cook a whole bird, unless you flip the chicken, the thighs will be on the bottom of the pan and they end up never really getting brown. Also, if you are pressed for time, a butterflied chicken will cook much faster than a whole chicken. To butterfly the chicken, you simply remove the backbone, flip the chicken over, and press down on the breastbone until the chicken cracks and lays flat.

My Italian blogger friends, Marie over at Proud Italian Cook and Maryann at Finding La Dolce Vita, are hosting their second annual Festa Italiana, a virtual potluck of Italian dishes. I wanted to make something really special for this, so I did a Pasta Roll, stuffed with spinach and dressed with tomato sauce.

So it's Daring Baker's Challenge time again! This month, the February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. They have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

My mom, Angela, passed away in 1985. She was from Sicily and I was just really beginning to get into cooking when she died. A short time ago, I was flipping through an old Italian cookbook of hers and saw this recipe, written by her, in the back of the book:

That's right, it's World Nutella Day.  This indulgent day was created by Sara Rosso, an American blogger living in Italy who writes Ms. Adventures in Italy and Michelle Fabio, another American blogger living in Italy who writes Bleeding Espresso.   These two women adore Nutella and wanted to create a day when we all indulge! In the spirit of that day, I've made some Nutella Purses which contain banana - one of the two great combinations in all of food history - banana and Nutella.  These are so easy to make and only take a few minutes.   You can certainly add some nuts to this if you like, which I would have done (walnuts, specifically) but I am the only soul in my household that likes nuts.  If you've never bought Nutella before,  you can find it next to the peanut butter in almost any grocery store.  It's a staple in Europe, even at breakfast.  Please visit The World Nutella Day site on February 9th to see the complete 2009 roundup of Nutella recipes from all around the world.

This month's Daring Baker's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf.   They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.   Karen is in the Netherlands and Zorra is blogging from Spain.  

The challenge was to make either sweet or savory tuiles and I chose the savory.  The recipe used for the savory ones are from The French Laundry - this batter is what is used to make the cornets for their famous salmon tartare cornet appetizers.  These appetizers are like little ice cream cones.  They are just two or three bites.  I did not want to fill them with salmon tartare, however, because I knew my husband would not eat them so I filled them with a mixture of ricotta and parmesan cheese and then grated parmesan cheese on top.   You can fill them with anything your imagination comes up with!  

These scallops, in a simple orange sauce, are so intense and flavorful that you won't believe how easy they are to make.  We loved them.  I've adapted this recipe from "Urban Italian", the wonderful cookbook Andrew Carmellini came out with this fall.  He's the chef responsible for the award winning Italian food at A Voce, in New York City.  In his recipe, he calls for the smaller bay scallops, but I used sea scallops because that's what I had on hand.

When it comes to southern Italian food, this is a very traditional dish. It's usually made with delicious Italian pork sausage and regular pasta. It's not the kind of thing you want to eat when you're trying to eat light or just healthier. But when you substitute turkey sausage for the pork sausage and when you use whole wheat pasta instead of regular pasta, this dish can be very healthy. There's a lot of great whole wheat pastas out there that not only are high in fiber, but are high in protein. Barilla Plus pasta is very high in protein because it contains legumes - specifically, lentil and chickpea flours. Bell peppers are incredibly healthy - they are high in fiber and contain more Vitamin C than an orange.   

"Seize the moment. Think of all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart." - Erma Bombeck

I had to start you off with that quote so you would feel better about this post.  This is real indulgence.  My husband and kids love these ice cream sandwiches.  You can make these with store bought italian pizzelle cookies, but it's so fun to actually make the cookies yourself.  Pizzelle cookies can be made in any flavor and shaped when still warm, allowing you to make little waffle dishes or cones.  But my guys' favorite way to eat them is to smear them with their beloved Nutella, cut slices of ice cream and make a sandwich out of them.  Of course, you can also just eat them alone, as a cookie, but what fun is that?

I just finished reading Marcella Hazan's recently released autobiography, "Amacord".    We all know Marcella Hazan as the Queen of Italian cooking but when she and her husband, Victor, first moved to the United States, she wasn't much of a cook.  As a newlywed in a foreign country, she poured her efforts into learning how to cook so that Victor, who came home for lunch every day from work, would be pleased.   Needless to say, over the years she became quite a cook.   She started giving small cooking classes out of her apartment and one day she received a call from a reporter at the New York Times.  She didn't know who he was.  He wanted to come over and interview her, but the times he suggested were always in the middle of the day when Victor came home for lunch, so she just invited the reporter over for lunch one day. The reporter was Craig Claiborne and the lunch Marcella served knocked his socks off.  This was back in 1970 and her authentic Italian cooking was anything but the usual spaghetti and meatball fare everyone knew at that time as Italian cuisine.   She served a lunch of Roman style artichokes, tortelloni stuffed with swiss chard, prosciutto and ricotta, veal rolls stuffed with parmesan and pancetta, fennel salad and a dessert of marinated orange slices. To this day, she said she doesn't think she could improve on that lunch.  It was classic.

I made 225 biscotti yesterday for Christmas.   Yes, it took a long time, but it was so very worth it.   These Mosaic Biscotti are so beautiful and just look like Christmas to me.  They contain hazelnuts, chocolate, pistachios and cranberries (my addition).   These come from the Queen of Desserts,   Gina DePalma, the pastry chef at Babbo.   There is a reason Mario Batali hired Gina.    She's brilliant.    And if you aren't familiar with her, check out her book on desserts, Dolce Italiano.   This book is such a must have if you like baking.

If you read this blog, you know that I love to stuff vegetables, as I did here and here and here. It's a way to get people to eat vegetables who otherwise wouldn't and it can also be a great way to make a special dish ahead of time.  You assemble the vegetables, refrigerate the dish and then pop it into the oven right before you need it.  I really love doing that because it frees me up to concentrate on the rest of the menu.

Here is a great little cookie to make for the holidays. It only has 4 ingredients, it contains no flour and it's from one of the best Italian restaurants in the country.   What's not to like?   This delicious cookie is what Marc Vetri serves at Vetri, his famous Philadelphia restaurant.  Vetri was named one of the top 50 restaurants by Gourmet magazine, Mario Batali sings its praises and Frank Bruni says Vetri ranks up there with the best New York Italian restaurants.   On the menu is a quote by da Vinci:  "Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication."   If this is true, then this cookie is ultra sophisticated!

I was scared to make this cake.

When I saw what this month's Daring Baker's Challenge was, I was excited because it was something sweet and the last couple have been savory.    This cake comes from Shuna Fish Lydon, who is a professional pastry chef and writes the great food blog, Eggbeater.  I started reading all the comments by people who have previously attempted this cake and had real problems with it.  I was sure I would, too.   But Shuna had lots of detailed notes posted about how to deal with some of the challenges of this cake and I followed them thoroughly and did not have any problem at all.   The cake was moist and light and absolutely delicious.  The caramel frosting is outstanding.  So if you have the urge to make this cake, don't be afraid. It was pretty straightforward. It just takes a little time to make it properly.

We had to go to Chicago this weekend for a wedding and we got to have dinner one night with our oldest son, Barry, who goes to school there. I've always wanted to try "Quince", the restaurant which occupies the space where the famous five star "Trio" and Grant Achatz used to be. We had a great dinner there. The menu had me stumped because I wanted to try almost every single thing on it. And I was so disappointed in myself because I did not have the guts to take decent photos of the food - just these lousy low light ones. But I was way too conscientious to use my flash in such a nice place. Just what they need - another food blogger taking pictures of the food. But that food really deserved serious photos. If you want to see real photos of how the food was presented, go to their website. The dishes are real works of art.

It's gotten cold outside and so it's time to make gnocchi. I hardly ever make this in the summer, but in the winter, this is such great comfort food. Gnocchi is a lot of fun to make - it's like playing with Playdough. I've included a video in this post to show you how easy they are to roll out and cut. You can make them when you don't have anything else around for dinner because the ingredients are all things you have on hand anyway - flour, potatoes and eggs. And now it takes me even less time to make them. Most cooks think you have to run the finished gnocchi over a fork or grater to get those ridges that will catch the sauce. That's how my mom and I used to make it.  However, when I have gone to Italy and ordered gnocchi, it is very often made without those ridges.  They are just nice fluffy little pillows.   I know that Todd English makes them this way, also.    And I have come to actually prefer the texture of the gnocchi without the ridges.

For those of you who are tired of the same old lasagna, try making this "white" lasagna. It has no meat and you can really use whatever vegetables you like. The vegetables are roasted, giving them a deeper flavor and the lasagna is assembled with a simple, rich bechamel sauce. Learning how to make a bechamel sauce is easy - you just whisk and cook!

I just finished reading Patricia Wells' wonderful book, "We'll Always Have Paris . . . and Provence". This famous cooking teacher has written a fun and interesting book about her life which includes some of her favorite recipes, too. She raves about this cake in her book saying she could eat the whole thing! She and I are alike when it comes to dessert. She says she can usually pass on dessert and I can, too. I do like a dessert that is not too sweet and involves almond flour. This cake contains no egg yolks, no white flour and no butter. It's light, like an angel food cake, but has that wonderful earthy taste of almonds. And this cake is so easy to make - everything gets whipped up in one bowl and put right in the pan to bake. Easy.

This is a recipe from the Babbo cookbook, which I absolutely love, by Mario Batali. The combination of pancetta and parsnips is just about perfect. I love to make homemade pasta and this black pepper fettuccine has a lot of zip to it. You can add as little or as much pepper as you like. If it's freshly ground, of course, it's going to be zippier. My farmer's market closed up shop this week and these were the last parsnips of the year. There were a few that were really bizarre looking, like something out of Lord of the Rings. That's part of the charm of buying local organic vegetables!