Every book has two stories. There's the book itself—the physical thing you hold featuring a table of contents, recipe headnotes, stories, and instructions. But this book, a cookbook, is not just made up of the title, subtitle, and description on the back cover. Those are the fancy parts and finished pieces, and the the culmination of a dream.

I'm always interested in the second story, the one that might never be told publicly, and it's often a tale of transformation—what the author learns alo...