Mayoral candidate Aaron Peskin is campaigning with food. Are his recipes any good?
San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin cooks the recipe Strange Flavor Eggplant at his home in San Francisco on Sunday. Peskin, who is running for mayor, has been making cooking videos, filmed by his wife, Nancy Shanahan, and posting them to Instagram.Laura Morton/Special to the ChronicleSupervisor Aaron Peskin skins roasted Chinese eggplants for Strange Flavor Eggplant.Laura Morton/Special to the ChronicleSupervisor Aaron Peskin checks the recipe Strange Flavor Eggplant in the cookbook, “The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking” by Barbara Tropp.Laura Morton/Special to the ChronicleSome of the cookbooks Supervisor Aaron Peskin references for the cooking videos he posts on Instagram.Laura Morton/Special to the ChronicleAs night fell in North Beach, Supervisor Aaron Peskin, the longtime politician who hopes to be San Francisco’s next mayor, leaned his back against his home kitchen counter, affecting his most casual, “What’s up, doc?” stance as his wife, Nancy, recorded him on video. The man once called the “Napoleon of North Beach” was about to make bean salad.With dried butter beans from Iacopi Farms of Half Moon Bay and jarred tuna that he picked up at Molinari Delicatessen in North Beach, Peskin whipped together a recipe from Italian food writer Marcella Hazan, all while talking about the recent rent control expansion he presided over as the president of the Board of Supervisors.Like Vice President Kamala Harris, who can apparently cook a mean Thanksgiving turkey, Peskin aims to sell his culinary skill as a plus during the mayoral race. Cooking videos are an especially out-there pivot for Peskin, who, like his fellow front-runners, has an Instagram grid filled with meet-and-greet photos. But any Bay Area gourmet would tell you that food, from the dishes you make to the peaches you buy, is an easy way to make a statement.Article continues below this ad“Aaron cooks like he legislates: with precision, care and hard work,” says one video caption penned by his Gen-Z campaign staffers. In the bean video, he uses a paring knife to slice a Bermuda onion, yet still finds an opportunity to give a nod to his district: It’s not sharp enough, he says. Better take it to Cole Hardware. Supervisor Aaron Peskin pours sauce into the pan for Strange Flavor Eggplant.Laura Morton/Special to the ChroniclePeskin is the most progressive of the front-runners in a mayoral race dominated by tough-on-crime moderates, and his cooking videos, as casual as they are, are part of that differentiation. And as he rattles off the names of the shops he’s picked up the ingredients from, you can picture him meandering around his district, including Chinatown, where he claims a strong and hard-won base of support. It’s a small-scale, quotidian San Francisco that he’s channeling here.“That in many ways is what I’m fighting for, which is having a normal, everyday, affordable city where families can afford to eat together and be housed together in communities that are, you know, whole,” he told me. “And I think cooking and eating together represent that.” Article continues below this adThen there are the dishes that he’s cooked on video so far, which also refer to the ethnic makeup of his district: artichoke frittata and orecchiette lean Italian; seared salmon with avocado salsa, as middle-class West Coast as figs on a plate. On the night a Chronicle photographer dropped by his kitchen, it was strange-flavor eggplant, pulled from a cookbook by Barbara Tropp, former chef of San Francisco’s China Moon.That’s not to say the cooking show persona is purely a put-on. Maybe it is a little. But he seems to come by it honestly: Like a lot of people drawn to the kitchen, the act of cooking centers him.Supervisor Aaron Peskin prepares scallions to garnish the eggplant dip he made for a video on Instagram.Laura Morton/Special to the ChronicleA short while before I called Peskin last Friday, a car had crashed into the Christian Dior store in Union Square — in the district he represents — and the occupants made off with untold amounts of merchandise. Then in the middle of our call, another Chronicle reporter had asked him to comment on the recent turmoil at the San Francisco Zoo. And it so happened that as we spoke, he was on the way to confront a disgraced nonprofit head accused of mishandling $700,000 of city funding.Through it all, his mind drifted toward what he’d be cooking for dinner: salmon fillets, which he planned to season with cumin, kosher salt and paprika and serve with salad.Article continues below this adPeskin credits being elected board president by his fellow supervisors, in 2005 and 2007, to the meals he cooked for his colleagues back in the day. While I doubt that, in a race as contentious as this one, the current crop of mayoral candidates would go so far as to break bread together at someone’s home, I asked Peskin what he’d cook for them all if given the opportunity. Supervisor Aaron Peskin tastes the Strange Flavor Eggplant he made.Laura Morton/Special to the Chronicle“I don’t know if Daniel Lurie would deign to come to a commoner’s house,” he quipped. But he thought about it, and his choice managed to surprise me. It was a dish I’d had before — not at a nice dinner, but while sitting on a floor with a bunch of other college kids, scooping mouthfuls out of paper bowls and arguing about God-knows-what: vegan ratatouille from “The Moosewood Cookbook,” served on brown rice. Guest opinions in Open Forum and Insight are produced by writers with expertise, personal experience or original insights on a subject of interest to our readers. Their views do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Chronicle editorial board, which is committed to providing a diversity of ideas to our readership.It seemed like the perfect choice, actually.Article continues below this adReach Soleil Ho (they/them): Soleil@sfchronicle.com; X: @hooleil
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