"Politicians Don't Eat"

Before we got started this morning, we had a cheese tasting (with toasted English muffins): Chef Al opened up cardboard boxed holding five pound rounds of Saint Andre and Humboldt Fog. "That's the best cheese ever," I said as Chef cut a big wedge out of the Saint Andre. "Shussh!" he said to me. "You'll spoil the surprise. Do you know why it's the best cheese ever?" "Triple cream, I answered. "EXACTLY!" It's like buttah, only better, if such a thing is possible. And the Humboldt Fog is also delicious, a rich ripened goat's milk cheese with a distinctive layer of ash running through the middle.

Today I began the mortadella process: I weighed out five pounds of pork butt (remember, that's from the shoulder) which Derrick cubed yesterday. I marinated it with salt, dextrose, TCM ("tinted curing mix," or sodium nitrite) and white wine, and set it aside to chill. I went to butchery and absconded with six pork jowls, which are a lot like pork belly (thick layer of fat, thin layer of meat), but they have an additional layer of "spit glands" (according to Chef Al) which need to be removed. I sliced those up and diced the jowls. Then I ground the jowls and pork separately, each three times, using progressively smaller holes. The resulting products have been refrigerated and I'll work on getting the mixture emulsified, garnished, and into tubes tomorrow.

But today, we had bigger fish to fry, as it were: "The Barbara Boxer Party," as we've called it for the last two weeks, began at 11:30 this morning. It was actually a luncheon for Democratic union leaders, apparently a thank-you for getting out the (meager, according to early projections) vote today, Election Day. There were 175 invited guests, and we spent the morning in Garde Manger preparing large elaborate platters of sliced meats, cheeses, fish, condiments, and fruit. The hot side was busy also: we had a cold buffet running down one side of the room, and a hot buffet down the other, with two cash bars at the far end and a flaming dessert station in the corner. I never saw Barbara, but I recognized Willy Brown, Aaron Peskin, and Tom Ammiano. I manned the Caesar salad station for a while, at the far end of the cold buffet line, and Chef Al was right: I never saw any of the politicians eating.