Politics on a plate: Inside Yaron Finkelstein’s cookbook collection

If there’s a politician who’s written a cookbook, odds are I own it. I’m always looking for great insights, and in the Clintons’ calzone, JFK’s chowder and Thomas Jefferson’s chicken fricasse, I think I’ve found some.

Yaron Finkelstein with a selection of his cookbook collection. Picture: Neil Bennett

If anyone knew how to keep a secret in the White House, it was Bill Clinton. During his eight-year presidency he ­decided he’d like to throw a surprise party for Hillary’s birthday, conspiring with White House chef Walter Scheib to ­create a 1950s-era sock-hop themed affair. On the menu? “We served diner-type snacks from the era – a big favourite was a ­calzone with spicy tomato sauce,” writes Scheib in his book White House Chef: Eleven Years, Two Presidents, One Kitchen, which is part of my rather extensive (if arguably niche and nerdy) collection of political cookbooks.

My love of all cookbooks was born from a desire to teach myself how to cook. I didn’t want to learn recipes by heart, I wanted to learn about great cuisine, and the ingredients and techniques that make them great. I’ve spent countless hours in bookstores hunting for ­classic cookbooks; I own about 500 now.

There are “show books” that are intended to impress you, and then there are real cookbooks. Most of us have received one of the former as a birthday gift: the restaurant-chef cookbook with its technical recipes that only a chef can really execute. You’d only be able to recreate those recipes if you were standing with them in their kitchen with a brigade of assistants. That’s why I call them “show books”; they’re not the workhorse kitchen books, and never will be. Real kitchen cookbooks are full of recipes you can use to put a great family meal on the table.

Cooking the chowder made famous by a letter sent from Kennedy to a young letter writer. Picture: Neil Bennett

I like the cooks who introduced a nation to food and cooking. Marcella Hazan. Claudia Roden. Madhur Jaffrey. Really amazing food writers who weren’t writing recipes as much as they were delving into the stories behind them– stories about the cultural foundations of those foods. And when I inevitably stumbled upon cookbooks that had a political bent, the stories became even more fascinating. Then, like all collections, it became about trying to find as many as possible. I’ve probably got more than 70 politically themed cookbooks now, and I’m always hunting for more.

It’s a marriage of my personal and ­professional interests. If there’s a politician, or anyone politics-adjacent who’s written a cookbook, I try to find it. I’ve got the Kennedy cookbook (The Kennedy Kitchen), the Liberal Party cookbook, the Pope’s cookbook, recipes from Congress and the Australian Parliament and from Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson, of course, threw regular dinner parties with amazing cuisine. He travelled to France, ally to the nascent American republic, taking his slave James Hemings with him – precisely so that Hemings would learn how to cook. History tells us that Jefferson promised him that after mastering (or at least learning) the art of French cooking he would be freed – but reneged on the deal after they returned, saying he first needed to pass on his new knowledge. Hemings, it’s believed, spent two years teaching the recipes to his younger brother Peter before he was freed in 1796. (These details didn’t make it into the hit musical Hamilton).

Jefferson’s Chicken Fricasse. Picture: Neil Bennett

JFK’s chowder. Picture: Neil Bennett

When it comes to my collection, I confess the rules can be bent a little when it comes to the definition of “politics”. I include novelist Barbara Cartland’s cookbook because she was related by marriage to Princess Diana, and the monarch is the head of state in Britain.

Overwhelmingly these are books I’ve bought because I admire the politician, more than their recipes, which often aren’t great – they may be from a time when people were looking for convenience over the best ingredients. Or during post-war rationing when people were economising – instead of making a roux they would use condensed milk. Some evolved at a time when new technologies were brought into the kitchen, as women headed to the workplace.

Ultimately, I’m looking for great insights. Take JFK, the first president of the television age, who filled American minds with hope and ambition. A young girl once wrote to him at the White House and asked about what his favourite meal was. The Bostonian president duly supplied the recipe for his favourite New England Fish Chowder; the original, with the typed note, is in the President’s library.

But my absolute favourite cookbook is by Don Dunstan, the South Australian Labor premier who famously wore pink shorts to Parliament in 1972 and had quite a passion for cooking. Dunstan’s cookbook does great things with Malaysian and Chinese food well ahead of its time. I have two mint edition ­copies of it, one signed. That one’s for show.

Yaron Finkelstein is a 25-year veteran of state and federal politics, with former positions as global head of campaigns for Crosby Textor and principal private secretary to former Prime Minister Scott Morrison.