Like so many others, I’ve been riveted by the coverage of Ruth Bader Ginsburg over the past several days since her death on Sept. 18. “She was our prophet, our North Star,” Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt said at the ceremony at the U.S. Capitol where the late Supreme Court justice lay in state, the first woman and first Jew to be so honored.
Photo by Mariana Cook/Supreme Court Historical Society
"Pursuing justice took resilience, persistence, a commitment to never stop,” Holtzblatt said. “As a lawyer, she won equality for women and men not in one swift victory, but brick by brick, case by case, through meticulous, careful lawyering.”
Every obituary I read about the tiny woman dubbed Notorious RBG, who became a kind of judicial rock star after a book and movie were made about her life, mentioned that her husband Marty, a successful tax lawyer and his wife’s biggest booster, was also a gourmet cook. “Ruth Ginsburg was, by her own description, a terrible cook whose children forbade her from entering the kitchen,” stated the New York Times obit.
After reading this, I wondered what exactly Marty Ginsburg cooked for his wife and two children and what were the “delicacies” the Times article said he baked for his wife’s colleagues on the court. A Google search brought up the surprising revelation that there was a cookbook, Chef Supreme: Martin Ginsburg that was published in 2011, a year after RBG’s husband died of cancer.
The book was apparently the brainchild of the spouses of RBG’s fellow justices on the high court, according to NPR Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg, who had a a five-decade-long friendship with Justice Ginsburg. In a a story that ran after the spiral-bound cookbook was published, she quoted Martha-Ann Alito, wife of Justice Samuel Alito, on the book’s origins:
"One of my first conversations with Marty, in the fall of 2006, was about food and nourishment, and how satisfying an expression of love that it was for him," she recalled. "And that, in part, led to the idea that we should put the cookbook together."
RBG’s favorite dessert, Frozen Lime Souffle. Picture from Chef Supreme: Martin Ginsburg.
Of course I ordered the cookbook, but while it’s en route, I checked out a few recipes I found online as well as the table of contents. It includes dishes that sound excellent for an elegant dinner party, such as “Salmon with Grapefruit and Coriander Sauce” and others that are more down to earth, such as “Simple Meatloaf.” A recipe for the salmon dish shows up at the bottom of Totenberg’s story, along with several others from the book, including RBG’s favorite dessert, Frozen Lime Souffle.
Many of the recipes seem a bit fancy for our no-company, stay-at-home pandemic-constrained lifestyle, but the meatloaf—from a recipe I found on a CNN website—sounds more up my alley, though I plan on making it minus the pork and with panko in place of cracker crumbs.
Credit: Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States
Tonight I think I’ll make Martin Ginsburg’s “Grandchildren’s Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies.” I found that recipe in an article that ran in early 2019 in Bizwomen. The author, Ellen Sherberg, made the cookies “as a tribute to my heroine, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and as a way of wishing her a full recovery” from recurrent cancer. Sadly, I will make them in her memory and in the hope that the spirit that animated RBG’s great quest, referred to by Rabbi Holtzblatt as RBG lay in state on Friday, “Tzedek, tzedek tirdof”—“Justice, justice you shall pursue,” will inspire us all to work harder to achieve that elusive goal to which she committed her life. May her memory—and that of her beloved husband Marty—be a blessing.