June 29, 2026
By Paula Cornell
Photograph by Mr. K
Liz McClean pulls a huge ham dripping with bubbling glaze out of her oven. It’s taken three days to cook: first soaking, then slow roasting before bathing in glaze and baking again. Why go to all this trouble for a ham? Because it’s recipe 86 of McClean’s project to cook all 100 recipes in Martha: The Cookbook.
McClean is a fashion stylist and creative director with 30 years in fashion. It wasn’t until the pandemic that she turned to cooking, as love and loss changed the trajectory of her life. First, love: wanting to cook for longtime friend, now husband, Marlon Sporer. Then loss: a way to remember her mother, who loved to cook, after she passed away in 2021.
As a child, she gathered clams and mussels from Long Island Sound, which her mother transformed into steaming seafood linguine—an early lesson in food as care.
McClean continued working in fashion, but a new marriage, a new home, and the loss of her mother had reshaped everything else. She found herself searching for something new.
Martha Stewart’s documentary had a profound impact on her. Stewart lived by a motto of learning something new every day and was 52 when her television show aired—close in age to McClean.
When Sporer gifted her Stewart’s cookbook, McClean knew that cooking through it and documenting the journey online would help her learn and grow in the ways she wanted to.
Each recipe took time—shopping locally, prepping ingredients, and using her skills as a stylist to set the scene in her brightly lit kitchen. Her husband filmed and edited each video, helping her feel relaxed on camera.
“I fell madly in love with the process,” she says. “It was the same muscles [as in fashion] being used, just in a different art form.”
By committing to cook every recipe, she forced herself to face the challenges of recipes that once seemed too difficult. She learned to salt-cure and smoke chicken, make yogurt from scratch, and bake—something she’d never done. Now she enjoys baking buttery orange currant scones or a crisp, jammy rhubarb lattice tart for guests.
For the 100th recipe, to honor both her own mother and Stewart’s, she made pierogies—Stewart’s favorite recipe from her mom.
“This project had become a love letter to my mom and very much a way to sort of process grief too, and feel connected to her through food,” she says.
It took McClean a year to cook all 100 recipes, with favorites including oysters and a fluffy five-cheese souffle. She discovered local gems like Old Barn Farm and Thorncrest Farm in Goshen for plump blueberries and fresh milk, and Cornwall Hollow Farm Stand for eggs and honey.
Next, McClean continues cooking through Ina Garten’s 1999 The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook and other recipes, continuing to source locally. Follow her on socials to see all she’s cooking and learning now in her Litchfield kitchen and the neighborhood beyond.
tiktok: @liz_mcclean
instagram: @lizmcclean
