New Cookbook Tells You How to Eat Like a…Supreme Court Justice
- Posted on December 20, 2011 at 6:40am by
Billy Hallowell
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WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s children banished her from the kitchen decades ago – her tuna fish casserole the target of family jokes. Dinner duties instead fell to her husband, an accomplished tax lawyer who became a talented chef.
When he died last year, Martin Ginsburg left behind well over 100 recipes he had perfected, including cookies beloved by his grandchildren and cakes baked for the birthdays of Supreme Court justices. Now, with the help of another high court justice’s wife, those recipes have become a cookbook.
“Chef Supreme: Martin Ginsburg” was published this month. It contains nearly 50 of Ginsburg’s creations, ranging from a five-page treatise on the perfect baguette to a frozen lime souffle favored by his wife.
Ginsburg said her husband would be overjoyed.
“He was quite an artist in the kitchen, and he wanted to communicate to others the pleasure that he derived from making something successfully,” Ginsburg said in a telephone interview.
If he hadn’t become an attorney, he might have gone to culinary school, she said.
“My husband was a great tax lawyer, but we had more cookbooks than tax books at home. We had an entire section in the living room – three sets of shelves from floor to ceiling – with nothing but cookbooks,” she said, adding that he read them with the same interest he read mystery novels.
After Martin Ginsburg’s death from cancer at the age of 78, Martha-Ann Alito, the wife of Justice Samuel Alito, proposed compiling a cookbook in his memory. Alito said in an e-mail that the idea came to her when the spouses were gathered together at the court.
Image Source: Supreme Court Historical Society
“One of the goals as spouses is to be supportive to each other as well as the court family. Marty led the way with perfect pitch,” she wrote, adding that Ginsburg’s “culinary creations awed and delighted.”
With the help of the Supreme Court Historical Society and a CD of Ginsburg’s recipes, which he had typed so he could easily share them with dinner guests, about 150 of his recipes were whittled down to 47. Only one of his three recipes for celery root made the cut, for example. The editors also tried to choose recipes he cooked often and those that showed his humor and knack for explaining.
Cooks who attempt his Decadent Chocolate Bombe, for example, are told that, “Only a crazy person would try to make this dessert on a single day.” A recipe for shrimp pasta says whole milk can be substituted for heavy cream, in which case: “your sauce will still be very good and your arteries not so bad.” And his instructions for Chicken Liver Pate, which involve lighting apple brandy on fire, explain, “Your ceiling is not likely to burn.”
“When the going is going to get tough, he tells you ahead of time,” said the book’s editor, Clare Cushman.
Martin Ginsburg met his future wife on a blind date when they were both undergraduates at Cornell University in New York. The couple entered Harvard Law School a year apart, though she finished her degree at Columbia University when her husband took a job in New York. He followed her to Washington in 1980 when she became a federal judge, taking a position as a professor at Georgetown Law School.
Around that time, their children decided that dad’s cooking – until then reserved for weekends and special occasions – was vastly superior to mom’s.
“I was phased out of the kitchen by my food-loving children,” Ginsburg said.
Martin Ginsburg explained the result this way: “As a general rule,” he said in 1997, “my wife does not give me any advice about cooking, and I do not give her any advice about the law. This seems to work quite well on both sides.”
His wife’s biggest booster, he enthusiastically took on the role of Supreme Court spouse after President Bill Clinton appointed her to the court in 1993, making her the second female justice. He was a regular participant in lunches held by the justices’ spouses, and interspersed throughout the 126-page cookbook are their remembrances. For example, Maureen Scalia, wife of Justice Antonin Scalia, remembers Ginsburg volunteering to make fresh bread for an event when he learned she planned to use store-bought.
The Supreme Court gift shop began selling the cookbook in early December, and the Supreme Court Historical Society’s website also sells it. The first printing sold out and another is under way. Profits from the book, which costs $24.95, go to the society to support programs and scholarship on the court.
Ginsburg said she hasn‘t tried to make any of her husband’s recipes and hasn’t taken up cooking since his death. Their daughter, who inherited her father’s love of cooking, visits once a month to fill the justice’s freezer with dishes.
Ginsburg said she never understood her husband’s delight at spending hours in the kitchen.
“I could spend hours writing an opinion. But when it‘s done it’s there on paper, and I can see it again,” she said. “What Marty made was consumed too quickly, but he didn’t regard it that way.”
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LovinUSA
Posted on December 21, 2011 at 3:06amMichelle will write to her and tell her how offended she is, you know her, “The carrot Stick Queen”
Report Post »Ruler4You
Posted on December 21, 2011 at 5:23pmsorry, i’d rather pay for my food myself. government subsidized foods make me nauseous.
Report Post »jaylew
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 7:30pmoh yes…please let me engage in a diet that will make me wind up looking like Ruth Bader Ginsburg down the road…oh wait….she’s female……never mind. Okay so if I eat like Clarence Thomas does will I grow a big black penis? Oh wait I’m white….never mind. The entire Blaze forum is boring today…..totally and completely boring.
Report Post »dontbotherme
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 5:14pmI think this was a very kind & loving thing for Mrs. Alito to do. To quote: “One of the goals as spouses is to be supportive to each other as well as the court family. Marty led the way with perfect pitch,” she wrote, adding that Ginsburg’s “culinary creations awed and delighted.” I have never thought of the families of the Justices, or even of their humanity before. I’ve only thought of their decisions. This was a nice gesture.
Report Post »AFeatherAdrift
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 4:44pmYa know, they really need an age rule on this site. It seems that lots of little boys who care about a cookbook, but can think of nothing better to say that make silly little boy jokes about someone’s looks is interesting. Oh, but you aren’t little boys are you? Rather teanuts who have the maturity of little boys and pick on a cookbook put forth by a CONSERVATIVE justices‘s wife just cuz the justice in question rendered decisions you don’t like? Gee children, we would love to have all decisions you do like, but that would be ……a dictatorship you jackasses.
Report Post »COFemale
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 2:57pmFrom her stature she must of not eat too much of his cooking.
Report Post »SamIamTwo
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 9:32amurrm, Okay.
Report Post »macpappy
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 9:09amThanks Blaze for another non story that is so uninteresting that the readers are left with no comments but “she is ugly and votes the wrong way mostly”. Keep it up Blaze, you are going to be left with nothing but religious zealots, and trolls on this site.
Report Post »CleanUpAisle2013
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 11:36amSometimes after reading non-stories like this a day or two later I’ll find myself in line at the local grocery store expecting to see The Blaze next to the other rags: “I Had Obama’s Alien Baby!” … “Justice Ginsburg: Still Ugly as Sin but Boy Could Her Dead Husband Cook!” … “Moochelle Exposed! The Affair She Hid From Barry” … “Barry Exposed! The Affair He Hid from Moochelle. Chris Matthews Tells All!” … “Botox Nancy Admits Three-way With Harry and Barney: ‘Sometimes I Just Watched’ “.
Report Post »lukerw
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 9:01amI missed… the Foot in Mouth… AntiAmerican Entre!
Report Post »nobull14
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 8:46amWho cares what this old piece of leather cooks or eats
Report Post »rt elms
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 8:47amCulinary references aside, the Fourth Amendment took a major beat-down in Kentucky vs. King with an 8 to 1 decision. Who would have ever thought Justice Ginsburg to be the lone dissenting voice of liberty?
Report Post »jonnyfontain
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 8:10amGood Lord no one wants what she is cooking lol! if I had to guess it would probably be a lot of cheese, considering she looks like the human version of a rat.
Report Post »carbonyes
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 11:27amDoes look a bit like a rat, but looks aren’t everything. Maybe she’s about to come of age, where when your past 40, if you don’t have some conservative mindset in you, there is something wrong.
Report Post »However, there are a lot of loons and gooks well past their 50′s in the Democratic Party, who neither have an ounce of common sense nor wisdom, let alone conservatism. Some unfortunately have never matured both in the Supreme Court and in the Congress of the United States of America.
drago
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 8:07amWonder if it has a chapter on how to cook the constitution?…..
Report Post »Gonzo
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 7:56amShe can’t cook? I guess Martin married her for her looks.
Report Post »drago
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 8:05amThanks Gonzo, i just spit up in my mouth over that one…….
Report Post »Gonzo
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 9:09amGlad to be of service Drago.
Report Post »SpankDaMonkey
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 7:50am.
Report Post »I don’t think that bowl of Ugly you ate, was one of his better dishes………
drago
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 8:06amNow thats funny……
Report Post »Moozmom
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 7:45amI would love to read this cookbook, just to read his language alone. Sounds interesting and informative because I, too, love to cook. The cover is a bit lacivious and my guess is that it was intentional.
Report Post »grandmaof5
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 7:57amWonder what Michelle, the food Nazi, will think of this cookbook. I bet she will have the staff make the recipes for her while preaching her B.S. heallthy restrictions for the rest of the population. You don’t get a fat a$$ like hers (but great biceps) eating tofu.
Report Post »seejanemom
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 7:14amBetter not let Zira find outabout what you eat.
She’ll be all up in your “grill”, there Ruthie, you old hag.
And OBTW, your cover illustration looks like a headless Hooter’s waitress.
Report Post »Gorp
Posted on December 20, 2011 at 7:28amThat’s what I though when I first saw the cover of the book.
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