Chef Alon Shaya says that as a kid, he wasn’t just in with the wrong crowd — he was the wrong crowd. But with the help of a home ec teacher, he turned his life around and became one of the most successful chefs in the South. Still, it took him a long time to rediscover the food of his childhood and return to his roots in his restaurants, a process that involved his own family’s inherited recipes. Now, after years spent researching, traveling, and cooking, Alon and co-author June Hersh have published a new cookbook of recipes passed down through other families — Memories of a Good Meal: Recipes of Resilience Inspired by Stories of World War II Survival. Alon tells us about the bit of cloth that sparked the idea for the project, and about cooking for a 107-year-old Navajo Code Talker.

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