Porco e Cioccolato

Paul and I were enjoying a leisurely lunch at Shopsin's the other day down at the Essex Street Market (by the way, if you are in the mood for Thanksgiving in a bowl, go and get their Highschool Hot Turkey open faced sandwich...it's lots of turkey, mushrooms, tons of gravy, and there's a piece of bread in there somewhere), and we got to talking with the woman sitting with us at the counter.  Turns out she owns a stall in the market that she sells chocolates out of called Roni-Sue's.  Paul's interest was immediately piqued.

As we chatted a bit more she mentioned that she had recently started selling chocolate covered bacon.  She called it Pig Candy.  Now my interest was piqued.  I have recently bemoaned the lack of salty/sweet candy options in New York, so was pretty excited to have at least one.  It's not a salty caramel, but hell, I'll take what I can get.

So after lunch Paul and I headed over to her shop to taste some dark chocolate covered Jimmy Dean Pig Candy.  The meat is apparently procured from a butcher in the market, Zack over at Shopsin's deep fries it, and our new friend Rhonda coats it in a robe of chocolate.

And you know what?  It was not half bad.  I'll even go so far as to say it was pretty damn good.  Now the chocolate and bacon thing has sort of been done, (a fact Roni Sue is well aware of...apparently Kenny Shopsin was the one who convinced her to give it a try with his deep frying support), but this is a very competent version.  The bacon's actually decently crispy, thanks to the deep frying, and the dark chocolate (haven't tasted the milk chocolate yet) works well with the smokiness of the bacon.

So go ahead, gross out your parents (whether they be health nuts like mine, or ostensibly observant Jews like the parents of most of my peers) and give it a try.  $9.50 for a quarter of a pound.