All About Food: Food from garden and market
“I like to cook because I like to eat,” said Lara McGowan, yet another of Laguna’s wonderful home chefs. Growing up on Long Island with five brothers and two sisters, there was a lot of cooking going on and even more baking. However, McGowan’s mother hated to have anyone in her kitchen and so McGowan didn’t learn to cook at her mother’s knee. “Actually, my mom was an OK cook but a fabulous baker,” McGowan said. “She was of German heritage and loved to bake the old German favorites like lebkuchen and stollen. At Christmas time, she made 10,000 cookies, stirring the ingredients together with a wooden spoon.”
No fancy equipment in her kitchen!
Though the family lived in a large rural home, there wasn’t a lot of money. So the family did a little gardening and foraging. McGowan remembers that the kids formed an assembly line to pick corn off the stalk, passed it to be shucked and then threw into a big pot for just a few moments before they ate it.
“There is nothing quite like the taste of fresh corn just picked,” she said, and we agree! Living on the Long Island Sound, they also hunted mussels and clams, and foraged for sassafras stalks to make tea. The last day of school, all the kids would pile into the car to visit the strawberry farm for a “pick your own” strawberry fest.
In spite of (or maybe because of) the fact that their mother never let them into the kitchen, McGowan and her brothers all love to cook. Moving away from home to go to college at 18 and living in an apartment with friends, she taught herself to cook and prepared themed meals with her college friends: Italian, French and even a Seder. Then and now, she has always loved reading cookbooks. At that time it was “The Vegetarian Epicure” and the Moosewood Cookbook; although she has never been a vegetarian, she does love to cook veggies.
After college, in search of something completely different, she cruised into Seattle with just her backpack and found work as an accountant. She fell in love with the Pike’s Place Market and her husband, John Robinson, a physicist. The profusion of perfect produce and the incredible array of fish, cheese and flowers to be found there made McGowan a frequent visitor, carrying her edible treasures home on her bike.
After they married, Robinson’s job took them to Southern California, where she discovered the Redondo Beach Farmer’s Market, which was one of the first in the Southland. McGowan is an avid gardener and bought their house in Laguna because it had a quarter of an acre in the backyard, where she could have a large garden. It is filled with a plethora of goodies: apple, lemon, orange, tangelo and grapefruit trees, boysenberries, summer veggies and herbs growing wild. She supplements what she grows with trips to the local farmer’s markets and feels that it is very important to support these farmers.
Wholesome Choice Persian Market is her favorite. There she has made friends with the butcher who prepares special cuts for her on request. The market also has an enormous variety of produce and exotic ingredients.
“Food is about the hunt,” McGowan said.
When her children were younger, her talent as a gardener led her to teach kids at Top of the World Elementary School about growing their own food. They didn’t even know potatoes grew underground! Digging them up became a kind of treasure hunt, after which they had a potato feast with fried, mashed and potato chips. Miraculously, she got them to eat beets because they had grown them. She was years ahead of Michelle Obama.
“I find so much joy in food and feeding people … my family is 100% spoiled,” she said.
Two of her three kids also like to cook. Her youngest son, Willy, and her husband are more into music. Her daughter Gabrielle is famous for her homemade ice cream in flavors such as lemon-lavender made with ingredients from the garden. Her son John, a chemistry major in college, is the dessert maker. His specialties include cocoa nib panna cotta, soufflés and mousse. She is extremely proud of her children, who are very high academic achievers as well as cooks.
McGowan insisted on feeding us when we came to her home to talk with her. She made a delicious lunch with her special white bean-almond dip and horta pita (spanakopita filled with mixed greens). The filo dough was whole wheat and tasted ever so much better than the usual kind. She served them with a very tasty yogurt and shallot sauce. Dessert was a boysenberry crisp with fruit from her garden and the final fillip was a champagne cocktail with home-made mint, limoncello.
She describes her style as “cooking from the hip” using whatever is on hand and then improvising. However, everyone loves her chocolate chip cookie bars, for which there is an actual recipe.