Posted by Ed Levine, August 25, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Editor's note: Every afternoon we like to post a short Sugar Rush to end your day. Think of it as the dessert to your daily blog reading. —Zach
Although we've tasted a couple of other chocolate-bacon confections and have been underwhelmed, we are totally smitten by the "pig candy" ($9.50 a quarter-pound) at Roni-Sue's Chocolates in the Essex Street Market on New York's Lower East Side.
Note: Bacon snobs, please stop reading here. Rhonda Kave (aka Roni-Sue) takes a piece of Jimmy Dean bacon, supplied by butcher and market neighbor Jeffrey Ruhalter and fried by the good folks at Shopsin's (also in the Essex Street Market), and dips it in high-quality milk or dark chocolate.
Now that's what I call a food-community team effort.
Is it porky? Oh, yes. Is it chocolaty? You betcha. Is it salty? Uh-huh. Is it delicious? Insanely so.
Roni-Sue also makes a fine spicy bacon buttercrunch ($8 a quarter-pound), but it needs just a little more bacon for us to be ready to enshrine it in Pig Heaven (right next to the pig candy.)
Roni-Sue's Chocolates
Essex Street Market #24, 20 Essex Street, New York NY 10002 (nr. Delancey Street; map)
212-260-0421
roni-sue.com
In honor of the current tomato season, Brooklyn based lists three of Brooklyn's best BLTs along with some of the best tomato dishes and recipes from Brooklyn chefs.
Posted by Hannah Howard, June 11, 2008 at 3:45 PM
I was yearning for some bacon-wrapped dates from SIP, my favorite tiny Morningside heights café/bar/restaurant/jack of all trades. The dates are fat and juicy, stuffed with oozy cream cheese and parceled up in bacon. More importantly, they cover all the bases of a perfect bar snack: salty, sweet, fatty, creamy, crunchy. Bliss.
I had ventured uptown to get my fix, but I was out of luck. My waitress was apologetic but powerless to change the debacle. SIP was out of their awesome bacon dates. What was a bacon-needing girl to do but order the billionaire's bacon. Carmelized in brown sugar and sounding promising enough, it would simultaneously allow me to get my fix while also satisfying my sweet tooth. The bacon arrived flecked with parsley and sticky with sugar, a winning flavor combo, but clearly my disappointment was leftover from the absence of the real dish I craved. 'Billionaire's bacon' is no bacon wrapped dates.
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And perhaps the best news of all, strawberries are back! Spotted at Yuno's and Cherry Lane Farms.
Posted by Ed Levine, August 14, 2006 at 8:42 AM
It's tomato season here in the produce-challenged northeast, which for me means it's BLT season.
I am relentless in my BLT-making. Today I served my 85 year-old cousin Terry (I don't think she has a cholesterol problem) a BLT for lunch, made from two absolutely amazing heirloom tomatoes I bought at my local greenmarket yesterday, superior Nueske's bacon, Hellman's mayonnaise, a Pullman loaf (an excellent white bread with a nice chewy crust) from a local French bakery, and, yes, some baby arugula.
I only served the baby arugula in deference to my cousin Terry, who would have seen my leaving out the lettuce as unnecessarily revisionist. But over the last month or so I have been assembling "BTs" for myself, my son Will and my wife Vicky, and not once has anyone complained about the absence of the "L".
THE LETTUCE IS SUPERFLOUS IN A BLT.
There. I said it. I feel much better now. The bacon gives you smoky, porky, slightly sweet flavor, the tomato is sweet, juicy and lends just a touch of needed acid to the sandwich, the Hellman's mayo is creamy and rich, and the Pullman loaf's crusty edge gives you the crisp crunch some would say the lettuce provides.
Am I crazy? Is this food heresy?
