Saturday, February 4th

I've never been much of a baker myself. I do love cooking though. I am more methodical than instinctual in the kitchen. Meaning I own kitchen scales, meat thermometers, and fancy temperature -controlled kettles. That being said, once I get a recipe dialed in, I let myself experiment.

Being methodical in the kitchen doesn't mean total adherence to a written recipe. Part of being a good chef I believe is knowing what your ingredients are doing in your dish, thus allowing you to make good substitutions to a recipe. This comes from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's writing (I'm a big fan) and I really like cooking this way.

This means that recipes mean a lot to me though, I do like to write things down and write down what I have learned while making substitutions or modifications. So when I stumbled upon this old recipe collection in the Airbnb my relatives were staying in Santiago, I couldn't help but take a peek. There are a lot of sweets and cake recipes, but there are some hidden gems in there like a recipe for cornflour pizza dough.

Handwritten recipes for cakes and baked goods hiding in a yellowed, aged notebook in a bedroom? I can almost imagine the abuela writing these recipes to be passed down and lovingly making them for her family. So do I feel a touch bad that I have gone and "taken/copied" these recipes? Maybe. I'm undecided still. I think I'll have to make some of them before I'll be able to tell.

Below are the photos of the recipes I took. There are many less than ideal things about these photos, the quality, the lighting, the hard-to-read script. But I am gonna put these here for now intending to come back to these once my trip is over and transcribe and translate them. Maybe I'll even make a few of the recipes for my friends.