Reviewer Kristen Rabe Interviews Leslie Karst, Author of Justice Is Served
Few of us will ever cook in a high-end restaurant. Long hours, expert skills, and extreme pressure make it one of the most demanding jobs imaginable, but also one of the most admired. Indeed, top chefs are more like Formula 1 drivers or fighter pilots, such are the steely nerves and stamina required.
But the main reason great cooks are revered is because food and cooking is such an elemental, important part of our lives. Imagine how different your relationship with family and friends would be without food bringing you together.
This week, Leslie Karst is here to tell the story—as detailed in her memoir, Justice Is Served—of an extravagant dinner party she threw for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But what raised our eyebrows about this intrepid home cook was that Kristen Rabe called the book “enthralling, suspenseful, and exhilarating” in a starred review for Foreword’s March/April issue—which means Leslie’s got some serious chops, both with a pen and a sauce pan in hand.
Your reviewer-author conversation is now served.
This book is a fascinating account of your efforts to plan and serve a lavish, four-course meal for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her husband, Marty. Nine months may seem like a long time to design a menu and prepare for a meal, but this was no ordinary dinner party. To give readers just a taste, what kinds of things did you consider while planning this dinner?
There were two primary issues to consider in creating a menu for such a momentous dinner party. First, the dishes needed to be tasty and attractive to the eye—a meal sufficiently elegant to be worthy of my esteemed guests, as well as varied enough that one’s palate stayed fresh through five different courses. And I, of course, wanted to ensure that everything I served consisted of ingredients the Ginsburgs liked and could eat (for it wouldn’t do to present a beautifully-composed salad, only to learn that one of them had an allergy to, say, red onions).
But, in addition, I needed the menu to be made up of dishes that could be prepared largely in advance, then finished off à la minute, for I certainly didn’t want to have to spend the entire evening in the kitchen! So how to satisfy these two requirements? That was the grand puzzle that needed solving.
As part of your planning, you did extensive research and consulted with family, friends, and food and wine experts from Paris to California. What did you learn? How important was their input to the success of the meal?
It’s true that I sought out advice and input from a variety of people, who provided me with all sorts of information, from how to keep fish fresh in the fridge, to the best way to plate up my scallop appetizer, to which varietals of wine would pair well with the different courses to be served. And this was all extremely useful, of course. But what helped me most of all, I’d say, was how my family and friends agreed to be taste-testers for the dishes I was contemplating for my menu (I know, I know: such a hardship!). Not only did they provide objective—and sometimes painfully honest—opinions about the food, but they also offered, when needed, valuable advice as to how to improve the dishes. And their encouragement, when I’d become discouraged after a particular item did not turn out as I’d hoped, gave me the courage and confidence I needed to forge on.
In a series of sidebars, you offer intriguing, little-known facts about Justice Ginsburg’s youth, marriage, friendships, and political views. You also have a unique perspective because your parents were long-time friends of the Ginsburgs. During the time you spent with the couple, what most surprised or impressed you? How did your personal encounters impact your views of Justice Ginsburg’s legacy?
It was indeed fascinating to spend time with the Ginsburgs as a couple, for they provide quite the contrast: she, quiet, pensive, and understated; he, gregarious, outgoing, and very much the raconteur. But in Marty’s company, Ruth became far more relaxed and talkative, and it was a great treat seeing them interact, as they bantered and traded bon mots throughout the evening, clearly delighting in each other’s company.
With regard to RBG’s legacy, I had of course long been well aware of the impact she’d had on women’s rights—both as a legal advocate and later as a jurist. But over the course of getting to spend time with her in person, what I came to understand more fundamentally was just how she’d won all those legal victories. For although Ruth Bader Ginsburg is often thought of as having been this firebrand ninja warrior, storming into courtrooms spouting feminist dogma and cutting down her adversaries with scathing dissents, the opposite is in fact true: She achieved the results she did through embracing collegiality and compromise—a trait that became very evident when I met her in person.
Yes, the justice did come across as quiet and withdrawn, but there was also a kindness about her—a deep concern for others’ thoughts and feelings—that shone clearly through.
Justice Ginsburg’s husband, Marty, makes several appearances in your book. Describe your impressions of Marty and his contributions to his wife’s career.
Oh, Marty, what a beautiful soul he was! I feel so lucky to have gotten to know this witty, charming, dapper, and, like Ruth, utterly kind human being. Not only was he all of these things, but Martin Ginsburg—a renowned and brilliant tax professor and attorney in his own right—was also a profoundly generous man, who was always far more proud of his wife’s achievements than his own. And he demonstrated this pride with the fierce and ceaseless support he gave to Ruth as she rose from student, to professor, to advocate, and then to judge. Then, once it became clear that she had a realistic shot at a Supreme Court appointment, he campaigned tirelessly on her behalf, wooing everyone he knew in DC and convincing his law partners to do the same.
It worked, and Justice Ginsburg was the first to admit that she would not have been on that high Court were it not for the efforts and support of her husband. “I had a life partner who thought my work was as important as his,” she stated soon after Marty’s death from cancer in 2010, “and I think that made all the difference to me.”
Aspiring chefs at home will appreciate the recipes you’ve included at the end of the book. While few home cooks are going to plan anything this elaborate, what did you learn that might apply to anyone who wants to step up their game while entertaining at home?
The most important advice I can give anyone who wants to throw a dinner party—be it a multi-course, elegant meal, or a simple mac ‘n cheese with tossed salad—is that you need to ensure that you have fun, too! Keep it simple the night of the meal. Do most of the work in advance, and don’t plan anything that involves your having to be in the kitchen for more than a few minutes at a time. À la minute dishes (those prepped beforehand, then finished at the last minute) are wonderful for entertaining—items such as the seared ahi I served to the Ginsburgs, or something like pan-fried chops drizzled with a deglazing liquid made from the pan drippings, a splash of brandy, and a chunk of butter to thicken it all up. Quick, easy, and sure to impress your guests!
This book has the rapid pacing and suspense of a mystery story. Interestingly, you also write murder mysteries, often with a food theme. What is the relationship between this book and the fiction writing you’ve done? What are you working on now?
Memoirs are similar to novels in that they tell a story, have a narrative arc, and tend to contain the same elements as their fiction cousins: dialogue, discrete scenes, dramatic highs and lows, and a payoff at the end. But writing Justice is Served felt much different from writing my Sally Solari mysteries. For this story was about me; I had to be honest about myself in a way not required of fiction. No easy feat. It’s scary to put your own personal thoughts, feelings, and emotions out there for all the world to read and to analyze. But, of course, this very personal nature of memoirs is what sets them apart from other genres—and what makes them so very compelling.
As for what I’m working on now, I’ve just completed the copyedits for A Sense for Murder, the sixth book in the Sally Solari culinary mystery series, in which the dining room manager of a restaurant-and-culinary bookstore is found murdered on the night of a benefit dinner, and the primary clue is the simultaneous theft of a boxed set of signed first editions of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The book releases this coming August, from Severn House.
Kristen Rabe
