In the Kitchen with Trinity Mouzon Wofford

Not a manifesto—more a shift in focus, back to the kitchen, the table, the act itself. To mark its release, she hosted a seated lunch in Brooklyn, where a carrot cake with lemon turmeric icing—pulled from the book’s wholesome bakes chapter—set the tone. Plush with grated carrot, walnuts, and raisins, sliced thick and lacquered with a sharp, golden glaze, it’s the kind of cake that finds its way to the breakfast table over espresso.

(The recipe, fittingly, is one to keep.)

For Wofford, taste isn’t something you acquire so much as something you uncover—“an unobstructed expression of one’s own essence.” The less concerned she’s become with how she’s perceived, the more clearly that sensibility comes through, whether in her writing, her garden, or the way she cooks. With time, she’s grown more particular, drawn to people who are fully themselves; in that company, her own instincts sharpen.

Those instincts carry into the kitchen, where she keeps things deliberately loose. Her recipes—scrap stocks, dashi folded into eggs, ingredients framed as optional—favour attention over precision. Cooking, in her view, is less about getting things exactly right and more about responding to what’s in front of you: tasting, adjusting, improvising. A small, daily practice in flexibility, and in enjoying it.

Her cooking moves easily across influences. Japanese home cooking, shaped by her husband Issey’s family in Kumamoto, sits alongside the African-diaspora dishes she grew up with—collards, black-eyed peas, slow, familiar stews. Early days building Golde taught her to rely on what she calls “hardworking produce”—carrots, potatoes, sturdy staples sourced from greenmarkets. More recently, she’s been looking further back, working with her mother to recover her great-grandmother’s recipes, extending a lineage shaped before the era of convenience.

Even her idea of a fallback meal holds onto that sense of care. A one-pot broccoli pasta—what she calls “restaurant pasta”—is simple, but finished with enough intention to feel like something more, built from pasta water and toasted nuts. Because even at the end of a long day, she maintains, dinner can still carry a bit of romance—something that gives you back a sense of agency.

And then there are the small constants: a skillet jam, made often and without fuss, using whatever fruit is on hand—frozen raspberries included—kept in the fridge and folded into daily life. Spooned over yogurt, stirred into oatmeal, layered into cakes. Like the carrot cake that anchors the book, it’s a reminder that the point isn’t perfection. It’s paying attention—and returning to it, again and again.

Wofford describes the book as a homegrown project in the truest sense. Now based in the Hudson Valley, and a fourth-generation Upstate New Yorker, she made it entirely within her own orbit—photographed at home, with her husband Issey carving the linocut prints that appear on the cover and throughout, each one pulled from their kitchen table. There’s a lived-in quality to it all, something shaped slowly and by hand.

That same spirit carried into the Brooklyn gathering, brought to life in collaboration with Erin of Underwater Weaving. The two first met at a mother’s retreat, bonding over a shared appreciation for craft before Wofford discovered Erin’s family-run basketry practice. What followed has been an easy, ongoing exchange—small projects, mutual admiration, a shared language of materials and care. For the lunch, Erin filled the rooms with loose, just-cut arrangements and her woven baskets—set on tables, tucked into corners, used and moved rather than simply placed—so the space felt like it had been lived in all morning, not staged for an afternoon.

PORTA offers a uniquely honed edit of homewares from Europe bringing unique character and thoughtful design to your table and home in a way that simultaneously celebrates tradition while embracing contemporary style. Through our travels, interests and obsessions we bring storied traditions and histories to light so they can be engaged with in new ways. Many chefs explore and play with similar interests and ideas through food, and in our seriesIn The Kitchen With…we hope to highlight the joy and creativity that happens from stove to table by inviting chefs to whip up something wonderful on (or accessorized by) PORTA products. Each chef is generously sharing their recipe with us so that we can all recreate the magic at home, and answering a few questions about their love of food and approach to bringing people together around the table.