Kitchen Confidence: Anna Stockwell’s Reinvisioned Hurley Home

Even Anna Stockwell has to wing it sometimes. The chef and author admits that planning one of her fêtes is part of the fun. But even the best laid plans—guest list carefully assembled, seasonal menu mapped, flowers arranged, place cards, dishes, and glassware set—can go awry. “I set out to cook with a specific vision,” Stockwell says. “Then I go to the grocery store and they’re out of a key ingredient, so I have to change it all up on the fly.” Last-minute mishaps call for creative innovation. “Let’s say we’re going to have chicken thighs but they don’t sear nicely, so then I turn them into a braised chicken stew. Substitutions happen.”

Admittedly problem solving in the kitchen is kind of Stockwell’s thing. A recipe developer, tester, and food stylist, she has a knack for taking complicated culinary concepts, and breaking them down into manageable bites.

(Her book, For the Table, a cookbook and guide to throwing dinner parties around two easily prepared entrees came out in April.) “Of course, you need a certain amount of knowledge and skills, but once you’ve internalized some techniques you can start riffing,” she explains. “You just have to trust your instincts.”

This philosophy has served her well on her journey upstate. Her sprawling 1840 Colonial, sitting on almost an acre of lawn and towering spruce trees, seems ideally suited to her particular mission of welcoming people into her home and feeding them. Centered around an open-concept kitchen with a living area large enough to accommodate a grand piano at one end and a formal dining table at the other, the first floor looks out over an ample patio for barbecuing and Stockwell’s fledgling garden. It required some improvisation, but now her home has all the color, texture, and careful placement of a well-designed charcuterie board.

Kitchen Wisdom

A native of New Hampshire, Stockwell grew up in a home where cooking was a central passion. “My mother was a great home cook,” Stockwell says. “There were cookbooks and food magazines everywhere in the house and I was always devouring that content.” There was also the freedom to experiment. “My mother is very intuitive and often just cooked based on how she felt,” says Stockwell.

All this left a huge imprint on Stockwell, who shared her mother’s passion but didn’t realize it could translate into an actual job until her twenties. She began her career in New York City as the photo editor of a luxury magazine, but it didn’t stick. “I spent all my free time thinking about food, learning to cook for myself, and hosting dinner parties in my tiny Brooklyn apartment,” she explains. “Even in that tiny apartment, the space was completely prioritized for dining.”

Stockwell became an editor at Saveur, where her job was food adjacent—but still not close enough. “It was a terrific crash course in magazine publishing,” says Stockwell. “But I was constantly in the test kitchen, tasting the food and watching what they were doing.” It spurred her to enroll at the International Culinary Center in SoHo—a year-long intensive program that gave her the credentials to back up her homegrown skills. Afterward, she began her tenure as a recipe tester and editor at Bon Appetit and Epicurious.

The Evolving Recipe

After 12 years in Brooklyn, Stockwell began to outgrow both her editorial job and her apartment. In 2020, she felt it was time to strike out on her own, so she and her partner decided to move out of the city and buy a house.

They made a list and started searching “in a kind of mad, random dash,” she explains. Casting a wide net, they toured towns throughout upstate New York and Connecticut before happening on the Kingston area. “Kingston just felt right,” says Stockwell. “But what did we know? Everything was closed because of the quarantine, but it just felt right.”

The 19th-century Colonial in Hurley appealed immediately. “I loved the old, crooked floors,” says Stockwell. “I grew up in an old white Colonial house with pine floors, so I felt right at home.” It was the home’s open kitchen that really drew her in. “Having a kitchen that was an open integrated space was at the very top of my list,” she says. “I cook constantly for everyone and I didn’t want to be hidden away. I wanted an open space where guests can join.”

The couple decided to jump at the opportunity, but at the last minute, Stockwell’s partner walked away. “The night before the contract was due he backed out and I had to decide if I was ready to move on my own.” She was heartbroken but ready for change. She decided to buy the house and update the whole 2,356 square feet of it herself.

Substitutions and Additions

“I healed my broken heart painting walls and decorating my home as an expression of myself, a space I could entertain and host in, and a place I could work and cook and grow in,” Stockwell says. She began by transforming the kitchen into her Command Center. Cooking, to Stockwell, especially during a dinner party, is a fun, collaborative project, so the space needed to be both accommodating and a workhorse. Adding a custom, oversized island was key to making her design work.

The butcher block-topped island delineates the kitchen from the living area, providing seating for guests and extra work space. Stockwell installed a new, fire-engine-red stove along one wall and refreshed the adjacent counters with poured concrete, extending the concrete up the wall with a spackle brush for an ad-hoc backsplash. Rows of open shelving keep all of Stockwell’s pots and pans at the ready and on colorful display.

Stockwell’s cooking is inspired by all five senses. “I create meals according to the sensory experience I want to have,” she explains. “Sometimes I want something I can sink my teeth into, sometimes I want something heavy, sometimes it’s about texture or colors.” She took the same multisensory approach to home design.

She painted the home’s formal dining room dusky blue and converted it into her office with shelves thick with cookbooks. Stockwell painted the downstairs parlor walls pink, added new light fixtures and an heirloom rug to the cozy fireside space. Wallpaper resplendent with pomegranates and lemons extends along the home’s wood-spindled staircase from the first-floor landing to the second-floor hall.

Upstairs, four bedrooms and two baths provide plenty of space for guests to sleep any excess festivity away. Stockwell added a coat of burgundy along a hallway wall for a faux-wainscoting effect and painted the bedrooms shades of blue and green. She finished the home’s primary bathroom with blue-printed tiles and an up-cycled sink from Zaborski’s, a salvage emporium in Kingston. A compact, two-story red barn outfitted to accommodate guest overflow sits behind the house and features another patio—this one with a fire pit and cedar barrel hot tub.

If You Build It They Will Come

The winter of 2020-21 found Stockwell holed up in the house alone, tending to the somewhat ironic task of writing a book celebrating dinner parties. As quarantine slowly ended and the snow melted away, she started venturing out, and realized that she’d stumbled into just the right place at just the right time.

Stockwell began to make friends in the area—friends and people to cook for. She met her new partner soon after and introduced him to her house on their second date. “He said it immediately felt like home to him and seeing me in it just confirmed his feelings,” she says. The two have called the place home for over a year.

These days Stockwell regularly finds herself in party-planning mode. She maps menus, assembles shopping lists, and has pans at the ready. But if something goes wrong, or there’s an unexpected twist of events—if the cream doesn’t whisk or she can’t find the right melon—she welcomes the creative challenge. “You know, sometimes what happens in the end is better than what you planned,” Stockwell says.

This article appears in July 2022.