Veritasty: Truthfully Delicious

I like pig.  Do you like pig? Pig Island is coming up, which means Veritasty is about to hit its first birthday !   Pig Island is an annual outdoor food extravaganza on Governor's Island.  It features pig, and lots of it: locally farm-raised pigs prepared in a vast variety of ways by local restauranteurs.  There is an emphasis on cooking all parts of the animal, snout to tail.  I've recently been watching Bizarre Foods and No Reservations, so I've seen just how many ways you can prepare a given animal, and just how many parts are edible.  Even the funny bits that Westerners might never consider palatable can be delicacies in other places (I am a big fan of chicken feet, oxtails, pig stomach, and tripe, for starters). But let's bring it back to the pig.  It's a creature unfortunately seen as "unclean" by practitioners of some religions.  I was embarrassed to tell my Orthodox Jewish boss that I was going to Pig Island, but she admitted that...

Counter Happy first night of Hanukkah! To celebrate, we tapped into Alex's heritage and had a little nosh from one of the most famous Jewish establishments in the Lower East Side, Yonah Schimmel's.  We've passed by it a few times, and Alex has raved about their world-famous and centuries-old knishes and other noshy things.  The storefront is decorated with peeling and fading newspaper clippings and printouts, celebrating its 101 years of existence (mazel tov!).  There are even more newspaper articles and photographs inside, so much taped to the walls that they probably don't need wallpaper!  This is one of those places with so much history etched in its foundation that even though I think the health department would be really turned off, it is a great place to grab a bite. Pac-Man! When we first got inside, it was empty except for the guy who works there and one customer, hunched over a dingy counter with mounds of knishes inside.  They were hav...

Mint Chocolate Chip Cannolis Every year, loads of people swarm to Little Italy in late summer to experience the universal funness of a street fair in the form of the Feast of San Gennaro.  It's crowded.  It's smoky.  It's noisy.  It is also, above all, a quintessential New York cultural experience. Obviously there are things that are not ideal about San Gennaro.  A lot of the food stalls are unauthentic clones of the same old thing that you see at any street fair.  Mozzarepas?  Not really Italian food.  Best cannoli in the world?  Wait, I thought there was a sign for the best cannoli in the world on the block before; "best" is irrelevant.  Rasta-bananas?  Just...no words. Rasta-Banana...wtf? Sausage Then, there are also lots of things that are kind of magical about it too.  There is something deeply satisfying about having a piping hot Italian sausage sauteed with peppers and onions on chewy, crusty bre...