This recipe takes a lot of time, but very little effort; most of the time is spent ignoring it. The product is fiery--somewhat frighteningly so--but then the alchemy happens: you dip them in tempered bittersweet chocolate, and it just magically calms and balances the ginger, without burying or overwhelming it. Semisweet doesn't work (I've tried it); you must use bittersweet; I don't understand why, but once you've tried it you will not question it. The ginger syrup produced as a byproduct is fabulous as a sweetener for tea, especially when you have a cold.
Fresh ginger root
White sugar
Water
Peel the ginger root and cut it up; I like matchstick-shaped pieces that are about 3 mm square in cross section and anywhere from 3-10 cm long. (A range of sizes will allow your wussier guests to have small pieces and your bolder guests to have large pieces.) Pile the pieces in a glass measuring cup as you generate them and, when you're done, gently pack them down a bit. Note the volume that you've produced. (I believe that a pound of ginger root yields around 3 cups.) Whatever volume of loosely packed ginger you have, mix that volume of sugar and an equal volume of water (if your tap water is not so good, use bottled or filtered water, since you'll be concentrating any impurities) in a largish saucepan with a well-fitting lid. Cook over medium heat, stirring, until all of the sugar goes into solution. Add the ginger and bring to a boil. Just as the mixture is starting to boil, measure its depth. You will be reducing it by half over the next week or so, so write down or mark the depth if you think you might not remember. When it's boiling, reduce the heat to a simmer. Simmer for about 10 minutes, then cover and simmer gently (be careful that it doesn't boil over!) for about two minutes more, to sterilize it. Turn off the heat and leave it alone overnight.
The next day, open the saucepan (the ginger will have sunk to the bottom) and bring to a boil over high heat, stirring occasionally. When it comes to a full boil, reduce the heat to medium and continue to stir occasionally. Figure out how much you need to reduce the depth overall, and boil it until it's reduced by about one-fifth that amount. When you're getting there, cover the saucepan, reduce the heat to low, simmer for a couple of minutes to sterilize it again, and then turn off the heat and leave it alone overnight.
You see where this is going. Keep reducing the volume once a day until you reach the target depth. When you do, sterilize it as before and let it cool completely. Remove the ginger from the syrup (it helps to pour it into a strainer, so that you don't have to fish around in the syrup for every piece) and arrange it on a rack over something to catch the dripping syrup. Let it dry; if you're going to dip it in chocolate, you'll want to let it dry pretty completely, which can take a couple of days. Otherwise you can stop it sooner and roll it in granulated sugar to make it less sticky. It'll keep practically forever, although the syrup will get moldy if you don't keep it in the refrigerator.