A Treasured Recipe Collection

More than cookbooks, I have inherited from my grandaunt, Adelaida Lopez Locsin Ledesma, her recipe collection. It was handed down to me when she got ill by my grandmother who took care of her as I was constantly with them through the years and my Lola Adeliada had no children.

Her recipes are written in our Assumption handwriting. There are other recipe cards include and cut out from magazines. These are stored in two index boxes, one of which was for desserts and the other for dishes like our award-winning Lumpiang Shanghai that won in Cook's Magazine before.

This recipe collection she had placed at her side table. It was like opening a treasure box, then and now, as the recipes that are part of this collection are tried and tested, and even has notes to reflect any changes and about the substitute ingredients and changes in procedure. If she would copy a recipe from a cookbook, it would indicate at the upper left hand corner the name of the cookbook, the author, and the page.

These recipes are top secret and I am only allowed to share these with my children, as per what my grandmother had told me to do, though I did make an exception with two recipes as my relative, Mike, yearned for his grandmother's, Encarnita Murphy (who was their sister), one of which is Arroz a la Valenciana that is presented as a roasted chicken stuffed with flavored rice and served on a bed of rice and the other one of chicken corn soup with sili leaves.

There is one recipe though that she never wrote down which I mastered by being always in her kitchen. The leche flan that can be made to be as big as a Selecta ice cream can is the most awesome one you will ever find. My girls and I know it by heart. 

As I go back to the food industry after concentrating for many years online to be more 'offline', I cherish and add to this treasured recipe collection of my grandaunt.