[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 113 (Friday, July 24, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8091-S8092]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     JOHN PODESTA'S CULINARY SKILLS

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, our friend, Marion Burros, a superb writer 
on all matters culinary and otherwise, has written a most entertaining 
profile of John Podesta for Politico.
  John Podesta is a friend of decades and someone Marcelle and I admire 
greatly. It is not only his and his wife Mary's talent in everything 
from the law to politics, but it is also the Podestas a privileged few 
see when they are preparing feasts in their District of Columbia home. 
Watching them is like watching a symphony where the enjoyment continues 
throughout the evening.
  I can think of a number of times we settled all the problems of the 
world through laughter, food, discussions of our families, and on, in 
their kitchen. Anyone who doesn't relish such a feast for weeks after 
has no sense of culinary excellence--and I have never known anyone to 
leave disappointed.
  Mr. President, so others might enjoy the Politico article, I ask 
unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                     [From Politico, July 10, 2009]

                     John Podesta, a Seasoned Hand

                           (By Marian Burros)

       John Podesta may be best known as one of Washington's 
     consummate inside players. But he is also his family's chief 
     cook, grocery shopper and, apparently, bottle washer--and can 
     put on a five-course meal for six in the space of three hours 
     without assistance, and with a bare minimum of advance 
     preparation.
       The adjectives used to describe Podesta's political 
     skills--methodical and disciplined--apply equally to his 
     well-honed cooking techniques, learned from his mother long 
     before he became one of the capital's most influential 
     Democratic power brokers.
       No recipes, no timing notes. ``I consult cookbooks for 
     ideas,'' he said. ``I don't use recipes. I don't tend to cook 
     like a chemist.''
       What he does do is cook and talk at the same time, a skill 
     generally found only among professionals. And he talks the 
     game of a seasoned cook while he chops, using the proper 
     knife technique. Interspersed are funny, self-deprecating 
     stories, including tales of his tour of duty as a guide 
     wearing an 18th-century costume that involved slaughtering 
     and roasting pigs.
       But more on that later.
       Hard-driving is the adjective often applied to Podesta's 
     style in all of the various incarnations of his Washington 
     career--as a lobbyist with his brother Tony, as a staffer for 
     Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), as chief of staff in the Clinton 
     White House, as co-chairman of the Obama transition team and 
     as chief executive of the Center for American Progress, a 
     liberal think tank he helped found. When he relaxes, if that 
     is a word that can be applied to the tightly wound Podesta, 
     it's through two favorite pursuits: jogging and cooking.
       He also collects contemporary art, is a UFO aficionado and 
     loves nothing more than to sit in the front car of a roller 
     coaster with his wife, Mary, as they hurtle along, holding 
     hands above their heads. A feat, he notes proudly, achieved 
     with the purchase of senior citizen tickets. He runs 
     marathons, completing his latest in Rome in 4:06. In fact, he 
     plans his menus while he runs. ``I kept going back and forth 
     between pork and fish,'' he said about dinner on a recent 
     evening.
       ``Cooking is what I do to relax,'' he said. ``It's much 
     easier to see the fruits of your labor. It's fun.''
       Even better is cooking for crowds. ``Cooking for 50 needs 
     organization, preparation and thought,'' Podesta said. ``One 
     part is creative; one part you have to get your mind focused. 
     That's challenging.''
       As a young boy, he was expected to finish the dinners his 
     mother, who worked at night, left on the stove. Mary Podesta 
     was Greek-American, his father Italian-American, so he 
     learned to cook dishes from both cultures. ``I make a pretty 
     mean moussaka, pastitsio, baklava and spanakopita,'' he said, 
     reeling off Greek dishes that are complicated, the latter two 
     made with the paper-thin phyllo dough, requiring great manual 
     dexterity.
       ``My mother had an intuitive sense of cooking and 
     chemistry,'' he said. ``She was a fixture in Washington. When 
     my brother was hosting a fundraiser, she would cook and sit 
     in the kitchen. She was very liberal and very opinionated, 
     and this was the age of Republican control of Congress.
       ``A reporter was talking to her, and she was going off on 
     Trent Lott, [Newt] Gingrich and [Tom] DeLay. It was the most 
     embarrassing moment for us, but the reporter took pity on her 
     and didn't write about it.''
       As Podesta explains it, with a Greek mother and Italian 
     father, speaking your mind was a core value of his childhood. 
     ``We were a blue-collar Chicago family,'' he said. ``The 
     kitchen table was not a model of decorum. It was all right to 
     yell.''
       His heritage, he once told an interviewer, also explains 
     his hot temper and accounts for the occasional appearance of 
     Skippy, his sarcastic and ill-humored alter ego.
       Flashing a touch of his well-known wit, he said it also 
     explains ``why I can't understand why Obama doesn't hold 
     grudges.''
       The meal began with the risotto, topped with chopped fresh 
     radicchio and basil and served with a 2004 Fonterutoli 
     Chianti Classico. Podesta put the tilapia on to cook while 
     the guests finished the risotto. It was served with all of 
     the vegetable dishes and a 2006 Kistler Carneros chardonnay.
       He wondered aloud if he should serve the salad and then 
     disappeared into the basement for the mandoline to slice the 
     fennel and red peppers, which he dressed with olive oil and 
     lemon juice.
       His wife, Mary, arrived home from her book club just in 
     time for the dessert of berries in prosecco, which was served 
     with Perrier Jouet rose. She confirmed that he did most of 
     the cooking and the dishes.
       ``Having a husband who does all the cooking is pretty 
     great,'' said Mary Podesta, who is also a lawyer. Asked if 
     she had a say in what is served, there was a pause: ``We 
     negotiate.''
       Podesta cooks dinner every night he is in town, as he did 
     when his three children lived at home, and thought nothing of 
     introducing them to exotic foods like frogs' legs, 
     sweetbreads and squid. He and his wife seldom eat out and 
     entertain about once a week.
       It's no different from his remarkable ability to impose 
     discipline on a bunch of unruly Democrats--or the fractious 
     factions of the Clinton West Wing.
       For this informal Sunday dinner for six, the 60-year-old 
     Podesta was dressed in a polo shirt, shorts, sports socks and 
     sneakers. He led his guests directly to the modest kitchen in 
     his Northwest D.C. home, where most surfaces were covered 
     with what was soon to be dinner. There were tomato halves 
     soon to be topped with pesto (the one recipe he had made in 
     advance); arborio rice simmering on the stove, on its way to 
     being risotto; a pan of sauteed leeks and radicchio to be 
     added to the risotto; Brussels sprouts to be roasted with 
     thyme; bok choy and a baking dish, which would soon hold 
     tilapia sprinkled with olives and capers and cooked in 
     parchment.
       Cocktails, or the kibitzing hour, took place in the 
     kitchen, where simple snacks to go with the Jacob's Creek 
     sparkling wine included dried apricots stuffed with goat 
     cheese.
       Podesta likened dinner preparations to training for ``Iron 
     Chef,'' though there was no secret ingredient and his only 
     competition was with himself, to pull off the dinner without 
     a hitch.
       He has been, however, prevailed upon to participate in 
     celebrity cook-offs that Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) holds to 
     raise campaign cash. He had only this to say about the 
     results: ``When the lobbyists judge, usually a member of 
     Congress wins. When Nora Pouillon (the chef and owner of 
     Restaurant Nora) judged it, I won.'' His winning dish was 
     grilled tuna in the style of vitello tonnato.
       Running 30 miles a week explains, in part, why he is reed-
     thin, despite his love of food. But then, he has never liked 
     breakfast and hardly ever goes out to business lunches, 
     considering them ``an occupational hazard.''
       As Podesta talked, he went back and forth between the 
     dishes, his timing impeccable. He doesn't rattle easily.
       A few things were bought the day before, the rest that 
     morning. His choice of grocery stores reflects his frugal 
     nature as much as his cooking skills. Before Balducci's bit 
     the dust, he avoided it. ``Too expensive,'' he said. While he 
     goes to Magruder's and Whole Foods, he also goes to Costco 
     and Rodman's, a drugstore better known for its discounted 
     gourmet products than for filling prescriptions.
       His stove also makes a statement about his frugality. ``I'm 
     not into the whole Vulcan thing and all that,'' he said. ``I 
     do very well with a Sears stove. I'm always bargain hunting; 
     I could totally live on Social Security.'' Not counting his 
     fine wine collection or his contemporary art, perhaps--though 
     continuing the frugal theme, he insists the art is ``mostly 
     picked up at bargain-basement prices.''
       The hunt for bargains is a testament to his mother's 
     influence. ``My parents were completely Depression people, 
     but we always ate well, even during the war,'' he said. ``My 
     mother scrounged around for bargains till the day she died.''
       They even cooked their own wedding supper for 80--with the 
     help of a few relatives.
       Talk of pig roasting and slaughter kept popping up during 
     dinner and was the last tale Podesta told before the guests 
     left. To earn money while attending law school at Georgetown, 
     he spent two years working at Turkey Run Farm in McLean, now 
     called the Claude Moore Colonial Farm, an 18th-century re-
     creation.
       He dressed in britches, a blousy linen shirt, floppy hat 
     and homemade shoes and learned how to butcher and roast a 
     pig.

[[Page S8092]]

       Standing in the kitchen and acting out his role, Podesta 
     explained: ``It's best to do the butchering at 4 a.m., 
     ``because pigs should be slaughtered when it is cool, and it 
     takes a long time to roast them. The pig is hauled on a 
     front-end loader in order to split and gut it. It's most 
     important to slow the pig down by shooting it between the 
     eyes so you can cut its throat. It makes the pig less ornery 
     and a whole lot more cooperative than if you just stick a 
     knife in its throat.''
       In homage to these skills, Podesta used to have a picture 
     of a pig on a spit as his screen saver, but his staffers made 
     him get rid of it, because he said: ``They couldn't stand 
     looking into the pig's eyes during meetings.''
       The powerful John Podesta does not always get his way.

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