PORK: THE PERENNIAL DARK HORSE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE | By Adrian Miller

Adrian Miller is an attorney, food writer, and former Special Assistant to President Bill Clinton. Adrian’s first book, Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time, won the 2014 James Beard Foundation Book Award for Outstanding Reference and Scholarship. Adrian’s next book on African American presidential chefs will be published in Spring 2017.

Our presidents, from George Washington to Barack Obama, have had their share of food fights. I don’t mean that they actually threw food at other people, but they have figuratively and self-consciously used to create and maintain their public image and wrest control of it from others when necessary. It’s astonishing how fervently the American public believes that what a president likes, and dislikes, to eat somehow opens a window on the presidential soul. This is why in recent presidential memory, we’ve learned how much Ronald Reagan loved jelly beans, how much George H.W. Bush hated broccoli, when Bill Clinton jogged to a McDonald’s, how George W. Bush loves his barbecue and how Barack Obama likes to gulp down a good beer. The stakes can be high when using food to craft a presidential persona because it all comes down to getting votes, and pork has played a pivotal role in such endeavors.

You think I’m exaggerating? I offer as Exhibit 1 the case of President Martin Van Buren who was successfully tarred by his political enemies as a French food-loving elitist who used golden utensils. President Van Buren’s presidential rival, William Henry Harrison, drew a sharp contrast to the incumbent president by promoting himself as someone who loved “hog, hominy and hard cider”— a meal combination that appealed to the masses of common people. Harrison’s negative political campaign was so successful that he beat the incumbent Van Buren and won the presidency. It was the most serious case of political indigestion in presidential history. Though Harrison used pork for electoral good or evil, depending upon your perspective, pork has not received as much presidential press as other proteins. That’s mainly because pork has lost significant status in American meals since colonial times, mainly due to the growing popularity of beef.

Pork had some early advantages over beef in terms of making a regular appearance on the dining tables of European colonists. Pigs are lower maintenance animals to raise than cattle. One can feed them almost anything, they can forage for themselves in a variety of environments, they have a lot more offspring than cattle, and almost every part of their bodies can be used for some purpose after butchering. For these reasons, though beef was more highly prized, pork was more regularly utilized by colonists. Thus, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, pork had a well-earned reputation for being a subsistence-level meat, a consistent source of protein even in lean times. This doesn’t mean that all pork products were considered to be poverty food. Wealthy colonists relished eating hams and pork shoulder as premium cuts of meat, and such preferences gave rise to the expression “eating high on the hog.” This was reference to where these cuts of meat were located on the pig as compared to bacon, ham hocks and the feet. It’s no wonder that pork cemented its “common person” status in the American public’s imagination, and that politicians recognized the benefits of larding their public image with references to pork. After all, the masses were mostly eating pork, or could relate to eating pork, and that’s where the votes where.

In terms of its culinary and political reputation, pork started to wane in the nineteenth century. Let’s first look at pork’s culinary status. Though beef was an uncommon treat on American tables before the 1800s, it became more widely available and cheaper thanks to advances in cattle ranching, industrial butchering and commercial transportation. Beef also became the food of successful elites—an edible example of social aspiration. This only further marginalized pork’s status as a poverty or subsistence food. As Harvey Levenstein wrote in Revolution at the Table:
“The supremacy of beef provided grist for the mills of those who complained that the middle-class American diet was too restricted… The beef and potatoes syndrome was reinforced by a disdain for pork, almost universally available in antebellum days. Here too, the middle class followed their social superiors, who shunned fresh and salted pork and deigned only to eat an occasional slice of smoked ham. Although its low price induced them to consume much more pork than it did the rich, in middle-class eyes pork ranked far below not just beef, but lamb, poultry, and game as well.”

Flip though the indexes of the existing cookbooks written by presidential chefs, and the latter point made by Levenstein is painfully true. Pork dishes usually get a few lines compared to the other meats. Even the presidential barbecue book authored by Walter Jetton, Lyndon Johnson’s barbecue-in-chief, only has a few pork recipes. Presidential food is at its best for state dinners at the White House, and beef is the overwhelming centerpiece of such meals. Pork makes an occasional appearance, but it is something that is eaten more frequently during the president’s private meals in the executive residence, out of the public spotlight.

In the nineteenth century, pork’s reputation also took a political hit because it was associated with an unseemly political practice known as “pork barrel politics.” In its earliest incarnation, the pork barrel was literally a wood barrel full of salted pork that was stored for use as needed. Though many associate its use with feeding enslaved people on plantations, the pork barrel was also used on many farms and also to feed military personnel. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the pork barrel became a metaphor in the 1870s for the pot of government money that is set aside to pay for public projects. Soon, an odious practice arose in the U.S. Congress and state legislatures where elected officials were promised, in exchange for their votes, that money would be appropriated to pay for projects in the district they represented. The logic is that by pleasing their constituents with such projects, the elected officials would get re-elected. This was very sound logic, for many elected officials enjoyed lengthy political careers based on their ability to spend government money in their district. Thus, “pork barrel politics” was born, and symbolized government abuse and waste. In time, people dropped “barrel” and “politics,” and “pork” became short hand for bad government.

Despite the negativity thrown its way, pork has been able to rise to the culinary occasion. The following is a compilation of several great moments in presidential pork history:

January 1, 1842
President Martin Van Buren begins annual tradition of serving roast pork at New Year’s Day receptions.

Circa December 1890
Famed Kentucky cook Dollie Johnson, an African American woman, begins making sausage rolls (small sausages encased in pastry)—a favorite of First Lady Caroline Harrison.

Early 1920s
President Warren Harding grubs on knockwurst sausage and sauerkraut at stag parties he hosted at the White House for his buddies.

February 21, 1929
President Herbert Hoover changes the regular White House breakfast to bacon and eggs from the sausage and wheat cakes served in the Calvin Coolidge administration.

March 1934
“Winks,” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Llewellin setter eats all of the ham and eggs breakfast set out for the White House residence staff. Winks soon left the White House to “spend more time with his family.” This event, along with others, cleared the way for Fala to become FDR’s favorite dog.

May 8, 1939
President Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Ingrid of Denmark dine on hot dogs for lunch.

June 10, 1939
President Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain dine on hot dogs for lunch.

Circa December 1941
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill dine on sweet and sour pig’s feet at the White House. Churchill was not too pleased with the “texture” of this delicacy.

Circa 1967
A ham prepared for a White House residence staff dinner went missing. Mary Kaltman, President Lyndon Johnson’s White House Food Coordinator informed White House Chief Usher J. B. West of this predicament. At first, the employees were suspected, but no one was implicated in the crime. A few months later, an awful smell emanated from the staff dining room, but no one could pinpoint the source. Eventually, the White House engineers removed the paneling from one of the dining room walls to discover a decomposing ham bone. Those involved quickly surmised that some rats must have dragged it off the table and absconded with the ham.

December 1, 1975
The organizers of the annual Salley (South Carolina) Chitlin Strut sent five pounds of uncooked, frozen chitlins (pig intestines) to President Gerald Ford.

2000s
President George W. Bush regularly gets takeout from his favorite Texas barbecue joints for the ride on Air Force One from his ranch in Crawford, Texas back to Washington, D.C.

Fidel Galano: ANN ARBOR’S KING OF CUBAN PORK

ARI: You grew up in Spanish Harlem?

FIDEL GALANO: My dad was born in Cuba and my Mom in Puerto Rico. I was born and raised in New York City’s Spanish Harlem community. I didn’t learn to speak English ’til I was in 2nd grade, ’til I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, mostly because I did not have to. Everyone in my neighborhood spoke Spanish, including the mailman. I was always trouble, mostly because I was bored—I was unusually smart and articulate for a Spanish kid growing up in the middle of the ghetto. I was smart enough to hang out with the tough kids, and I knew if I could keep ‘em laughing I would be alright. They called me “Fi” (“Fee”). I’m very lucky. I have a great life. I met my wife Nancy when she was 15. Our local priest got my mom to send me to a Catholic retreat when I was 14 or 15. It was a place called Grace House at 108th Street, not too far from home. A real nice brownstone converted into a Catholic monastery and they lock you in for the whole weekend, which seemed like weeks to a teenager. So this priest, Father Bill, he’s responsible for why I got out of the neighborhood. He went all out in trying to keep me from getting in trouble and I have to say he really helped me. Even though he gave up on me for a while and he didn’t believe me when he said I was gonna go back to school. Who would, when you consider I was in and out of school from the second grade on up and I completely dropped out in the 6th grade? Father Bill was blown away by my resilience when, at age 19, I told him I needed to go back to school so I could get my family out of the neighborhood. Years later, after getting a GED and earning a Bachelor’s degree, I invited Father Bill to my business school graduation. Right before taking a group photo at graduation he said, “Fi, you make me believe in God.”

I knew early on that I needed to get out of the neighborhood. A lot of my friends never made it out. I was 19, and Father Bill helped me get my GED. I really couldn’t read, but I took the GED book from his office and I studied and studied and I passed. My friend scored just a few points lower than I did and he didn’t pass. And our lives went in opposite directions. Right after getting a GED I went to college at SUNY Binghamton. I really struggled that first summer as I was taking prep courses. I was failing and thinking about giving up and going back to the City. But then I realized I knew what to do, because I figured college was like working. I’d been working since I was twelve and I knew that work meant get there early, work really hard, don’t watch the clock, and make the boss happy. So going to class and studying was like going to work, and listening to the professor was just like listening to the boss, including making the boss happy. So I applied myself as if I was working a job and I never looked back. In my first semester I got a perfect grade point average. I was featured in a school newsletter and I won an award. I went on to do very well, graduating with honors from SUNY Binghamton’s Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and given an offer to go to graduate school on a fellowship.

ARI: What about the food?

FIDEL: I can’t remember a time in my life that food wasn’t significant for us. Pork always represented prosperity. When there wasn’t food, specifically pork, it was always because things were bad. We had many hard times. Like when my parents got divorced. All I knew when I was a kid was we got eviction notices and I never knew if we were OK. But one thing I knew is that if we had pork, such as Pernil (slow-roasted marinated pork shoulder) or Chuletas (pork chops) with our staple rice and beans, then I knew that, for the moment at least, we were OK.
In our culture my dad didn’t hug you to reassure you or say anything about what was happening financially and my mother wasn’t gonna tell a seven-year-old kid about her stresses. But the indicators were always there, so if we were gonna have pork, life was gonna be ok. To us, pork was an index to prosperity and social enjoyment.

There are many traditional and religious holidays in both the Cuban and Puerto Rican communities where pork is the main dish used to celebrate. All the Saint’s days, Santa Barbara, San Lazaro, and Easter and Christmas. Lent was one of the only times I remember not having pork during a celebration, and that’s because we could not for religious reasons. So instead we have fish fries with the other fillers we normally had with pork, yucca chips, fried plantains and fried bananas (maduros).

When things were good in general, there was this fantastic, amazing piece of meat: pork. It was made in many different ways. From a Lechón (roasted suckling pig), to a Pernil. The idea that we could make a pork shoulder was soothing and comforting, because it meant things were good. When we were kids and we knew there was a pig cooking, we knew that there’d be all these derivative products coming. In addition to the main dish, the Lechón, we knew that Morcilla (blood sausage made with rice, culantro, cilantro, garlic, and chillies), Pasteles (plantain or yucca root patty filled with roasted pork chunks) and Pastelillos (flour-based flavor-infused turnover filled with roasted pork chunks, capers, and any other goodies you wanted to add), would follow. We knew having a pig was prosperous because so many dishes would be made from one, and everyone in the neighborhood was the same way. We had one African-American family and one American Italian family in the neighborhood, and even they wanted Cuban and Puerto Rican pork dishes.

ARI: Is all that carrying on to your kids here in Ann Arbor?

FIDEL: There’s a real nexus to what exists today. My mother, my grandmother, and many of my Aunts were known for their food, considered amazing cooks that were often hired by others. Their love for cooking was part of them (the soul) and so was maintaining their reputations. When we prepared and cooked food, especially for the holidays, it was to show love to your family and friends. That means you go the extra mile, you give it that extra something that only the heart and soul can give. I inherited their passion and abilities for cooking and have carried on with my family here in Ann Arbor, even though we are many miles and many dollars away from what I had growing up. My kids get just as excited as I used to about Cuban and Puerto Rican cooking. Although we are now economically removed from that poverty that I grew up with, my kids have been exposed to many of the cooking traditions and approaches I grew up on. Especially cooking pork and some of the amazing Cuban and Puerto Rican foods I was exposed to as a boy. So if you talk to my three children, who all grew up in Ann Arbor, are doing great with top educations, and pursuing advanced degrees, they will say many of the things I said as a boy when it comes to Cuban and Puerto Rican food. For example, when I say that I’m making a cultural pork dish, like Pernil, they all get really excited because they know what it means. Not only do they know the main dish will be filled with great flavor and accompanied by other cultural foods (Cuban black beans, saffron rice and fried yucca root), they also know the derivative dishes to follow, such as Pasteles or Patelillos. They love our cultural food, and that is what they crave. They never beg me to take them anywhere or anything like that, even though my wife and I have exposed them to some of the best culinary cuisine. They want me to make food at home! Now that I’ve slowed down a little with cooking, my daughter says, “Come on dad, I’ll do all the work! Let’s cook!” It’s wonderful to see how they’ve tied an emotional prosperity to our cultural pork dishes, just like I tied them to financial prosperity as boy growing up in poverty.

ARI: What are some of the dishes?

FIDEL: To me, roasted pork is the key. You acquire the pork, wash it in white vinegar and prepare it as you need to (family traditions and/or religious traditions). We always cleaned it really carefully. Then we’d strategically poke holes in the meat to get it to breathe the flavors in. Crush garlic, cumin, black pepper, Spanish paprika, and other dry ingredients to create a dry rub. Then we add extra virgin olive oil and wine or vinegar to make a pesto. Cut nice-sized holes, and insert crushed or whole garlic cloves into them along with a heaping of the pesto. When we made a whole pig or a shoulder, there were all these supporting things around it. You had to have slow-cooked black beans, red rice, double-fried plantains and yucca (boiled or fried). Everything has to be supported by the pork, because it is added in some way. We used pork to flavor almost everything, even the beans and the rice. You start with some pork belly where you almost burn it dark brown and then you deglaze it and then it becomes the base flavor of your beans and yellow rice. If you did not have a whole hog, then you make a pork shoulder (Pernil). Pernil is the poor man’s lechón. It’s the shoulder. If you buy it right, you still get the skin and the fat that help make the flavor we want.

I love the Pastelillos. Those are our turnovers. We make them with this dough that’s infused with saffron. You add the saffron to some oil, and then add that to the dough and then you make these discs and you fold them and seal them with the pork filling inside. Oh man! That’s prosperity! There’s no way to make the turnovers without doing the whole pork roast through. You have to truly get a roasted pork shoulder that you loved and you gave it that passion. You chop up the roasted pork and good distribution of dark and white meat. Red pepper, garlic, Spanish olives, whole capers. It’s the recipe I’ve perfected over the last few years. Season with cumin, salt, garlic. One of our secrets: we put sugar on everything. A little sprinkle to give that little extra…

I love Yucca! Especially Pasteles made of Yucca. Of all the starch family, yucca is it for me! During the holidays, my uncle, my mom, and my grandmother would make many things from Yucca, even though money was always tight. Their cooking was so good that people would front them the cash to get a dozen of these Pasteles. So my grandmother and my mother would turn the whole living room into a production environment. My job as a boy was to grate plantains. My older brother was stronger so he grated the yucca. They would make this base using a plantain or Yucca puree with some other ingredients. They take Achote (annatto seeds) with extra virgin olive oil and slowly cook it to release it, slowly strain it to make that reddish oil, and then mix that into the batter of the Yucca, and also to coat the inside of the rice paper or plantain tree leaf. Then you would take a big banana leaf or rice paper, and a couple ladles of the puree and you would make a round section of it. Then you would take that roasted pork and then you would fold it into this square. You would make a square in the leaf or on rice paper and you would boil it in the leaf. You would get this cooked plantain or yucca. Very soft to cut, but in the middle you had this roasted delicious pork. My grandmother would always add fat, because the flavor was in the fat. She would also add raisins, chickpeas and other things depending on how you liked them. That was a holiday thing! Oh man!

When you’re cooking this stuff in your home, you’re feeling like life is good. We knew life was good. We were gonna eat. We were gonna celebrate food. Pork really matters to us. When I think about my youth and what it meant to me, it was always pork as the holiday meat. I know a lot of people today think of Christmas and they think about beef. But I can’t imagine a rib roast at the holidays. It’s gotta be the pork. Without the pork it doesn’t feel like we’re alive. The beef rib roast means nothing to me. What really matters to me and my family is to have that Pernil or that lechón.

You can make Patelillos, Morcilla, and pig ears. My dad used to love pig ears with hot sauce. And Chicharrón (fried pork rinds). That’s where you take pork belly and then make a rind part of it. They’d cut these slices into it to make more surface area. Almost every dish, rice and beans, always had a little pork in it (mostly fat). It is pretty amazing how one product, the pig, leads to so many other products that would not be the same without pork. Pork is amazing. Man! It’s delicious! My grandmother ate pork skin with the fat every time she cooked a pig. She didn’t care. She ate, drank and smoked to the last day of her life. I don’t think she regretted any day of her life when it ended at age 80.

For dessert we used to make Coquito. It’s a coconut egg nog made with Bacardi 151. There was always Bacardi! We used to grate coconut. It was either to make coconut flan or Coquito. All of these things gave you a sense of we’re gonna be ok!!

Today, we’re very lucky. My kids are all doing well. They still have this great emotional connection to the pork and the other cultural foods we make. Pork means life is good! It means we’re doing well! It means it’s gonna be a great holiday! They have the same love of the culture and of the food. I thought this connection would only be for us, for our family that has been exposed to it. But now my daughters’ fiancé, a fantastic American boy who grew up in Canton, is into it. He asks me to cook, too. And my son’s best friend is Jewish and he wants it!

I know that Nancy, my wife, and I have done well. Better than any fictional story could predict. But I would not feel complete without that part of my culture—the food. The food with its flavors and smells link me to the memories that define me culturally. Without the food there is no celebration there is no feeling of prosperity, and there is no sense of culture. The memories of the food link me to who we are. If you abandon that, the food and the memories, there’s a real sadness for us. We love our culture for many reasons, but most of all because it defines us and links us to those that made us and raised us. Our true north is us, as Cubans and Puerto Ricans! Cuban and Puerto Rican culture, and Cuban and Puerto Rican cooking. And pork! For me, I can’t imagine success without the food of my childhood. We yearn it. Very importantly for the Cuban in me, “when you make a Lechón, we all know a Cuban sandwich is coming next!!”