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A scene today on Avenue A today featuring Giblet ... photo by Derek Berg...
Pig hearts are sometimes used in cooking — they are featured in recipes that are part of the Paleo diet and are the staple ingredient of several international dishes, including Bopis in the Philippines and Sarapatel in Brazil.
People come to Porchetta, the slip of a sandwich shop run by the chef Sara Jenkins, just for the skin, which she sells for $25 a pound. The trick, she said, is a special oven and good pork. She uses the middle sections of Niman Ranch pigs at a rate of about 20 a week, making sure the skin looks clean, healthy and fresh. (Cooks who use a lot of pork skin say the fresher the skin, the better the crackle.)
In the East Village, local cuisine is quickly whittling down to a single food: pig. With new pork-bun outlets and ramen shops, porchetta and hot dog specialists, plus bacon peanut brittle as a local bar snack (at The Redhead), the area is all bellied up.
Medical authorities say that people cannot contract the swine flu from eating properly cooked pork. There is no evidence so far that the people who are becoming sick were in contact with pigs. In fact, authorities are not even sure how susceptible pigs are to infection with the new flu.
Yesterday, amid fears of a global pandemic, I checked out the new East Village rendition of Baoguette — yet another entry in New York’s out-of-nowhere (but understandable) banh mi hysteria. But while normally I’d order their signature sandwich — a baguette stuffed with pork terrine, pate, and pulled pork, among other things — fears of sore throat, fever, coughing, vomiting, diarrhea, and possibly death overcame me. So I ordered the BBQ chicken. If swine flu paranoia is already stopping one New Yorker from porking out on a traditional banh mi, how long before the entire Saigon Sub industry feels the side effects of a possible pandemic?
In the East Village, local cuisine is quickly whittling down to a single food: pig. With new pork-bun outlets and ramen shops, porchetta and hot dog specialists, plus bacon peanut brittle as a local bar snack (at The Redhead), the area is all bellied up.(New York Times)