There is a charming man on 77th and Amsterdam who sells homemade pretzels every so often when the sun is out. He sells 3 varieties: regular, unsalted, and whole wheat. All are of the hard pretzel type. The regular is spackled with salty bits that dissolve on your tongue as you crunch into the pretzel. The unsalted has a lovely sweetness to it with notes of honey. The whole wheat is heavy and slightly acrid. They are all handmade and adorable in a way that only handmade things can be; they are slightly different in size and a little deformed. You can even see a thumbprint here and there where he got too excited and pinched the ends together too hard.
I have a penchant for good pretzels, so when I spied him on the corner, I stopped by to pick up a bag. When he asked me what I wanted, I just asked him to throw a bunch in a bag … the more broken the better. And so he dug deep and filled a bag to the very top for me and handed it to me with a big smile on his face, along with a “special” pretzel to munch on during my walk home. I couldn’t hide my secret smile as I swung my bag of goodies victoriously. I had a plan for these broken bits: I was going to make chocolate covered pretzels.
You see, I had known upon first sight that these beauties would be perfect bases for chocolate covered pretzels. His pretzels are heftier than most others, allowing for an optimal ratio between pretzel and chocolate. Making the pretzels was a simple affair once I got home. In a double-boiler, I melted a couple cups of Valrohna dark chocolate fèves. Once the chocolate had cooled enough to handle, I dipped the pretzels in the chocolate, using the blunt side of a knife to scrape off excess chocolate. I placed each chocolate covered morsel on wax paper and gave them all a flash freeze, before I packaged them away. Though in hindsight, I might as well have skipped the last stage. If my experience speaks for anything, don’t bother wasting time on packaging; before you know it, you’ll be left with an empty plate, a sheepish grin, and chocolate-covered fingers betraying your guilty indulgence.