By Request Betty Shimabukuro

Grandma Bea's best-loved recipes are compiled for a family cookbook

A RECIPE is a terrible thing to waste. If your family's got a great one, or two, or a dozen, what's the point of keeping it trapped in the brain of one aunty?

Get it out there in the public domain, or at least the family domain. Use it or lose it, folks.

My mother-in-law turned 80 in June. To mark the occasion, her daughters and I thought we'd put together a cookbook of her best recipes -- a keepsake to remember her birthday party.

It was a noble plan, and one that yielded many practical lessons, which I share with you now.

My husband's mom, Beatrice Perez, hails from Guam, although she now lives in Davis, Calif. She learned to cook primarily from her mother and carries most of her recipes in her head.

She has five kids, 15 grandchildren and five great-grands. It was these generations that decided the content of our little cookbook.

Being in the recipe-request business, I suggested the approach of polling the family for a list of everyone's favorites from Grandma Bea's repertoire.

The requests turned out not to be for party foods, but for the everyday stuff -- traditional Guamanian home cooking. Comfort food. Dishes such as Bisteak (strips of beef pounded flat and cooked with a vinegary sauce), Estafao (Guamanian-style adobo), Tinaktak (sort of a ground beef stew) and Kadu (shrimp or chicken soup with vegetables).

We got to the reunion with a handful of recipes, but once everyone was gathered, the requests multiplied.

The best part about doing this at reunion time is you can test lots of recipes. But first came the process of retrieving them from Grandma's brain.

She'd produce a list of ingredients, then say, "You know what do it." Well, no, not me. So we'd work up some instructions. And then her daughters, Nora and Lisa, would look over the results and the fine-tuning began: "Mom -- you don't put sugar in your corn soup!" Or, "Mom -- don't you put sour cream in the Tinaktak?"

And she'd say, "Well, it depends."

True mom recipes are that way, highly adaptable, based on what's in the pantry, or what's on sale, or how the tastebuds feel today ... Still, we got it all on paper and in the process I picked up some new techniques.

For example, the No. 1 request from the family was for Grandma's pancakes. The secret turned out to be extreme mixing. Every pancake recipe I've ever seen warns against over-mixing. You're supposed to leave lumps. But with hers you mix until smooth, even using electric beaters. And they are very special pancakes, but don't ask me why it works.

I also learned about browning sugar, a technique she uses in desserts, but also with meats. Her Estafao recipe calls for first browning 2 tablespoons of sugar in oil -- this provides a coating for the chicken pieces as they brown.

"Grandma's Kitchen" (working title) remains a work in progress, mostly stored on my home computer, with one print-out heavily marked with corrections. It's scheduled for Christmas publication.

My plan is to take it to a printshop and have it assembled in some sturdy form, a copy for each of the five kids' families and one for each grandkid who actually cooks. The others will get theirs when they reach an age of culinary responsibility.

In the meantime, here's a sampling of Grandma's cooking.

Grandma Bea's Pancakes

Combine flour, baking powder and sugar. Add eggs, oil and vanilla.

Beat with electric mixer on low speed. Continue mixing and slowly add enough milk to make mixture smooth.

Heat a an electric griddle to 375 to 400 degrees. Scoop batter onto grill. Turn when edges are dry. Makes about 12 large pancakes.

Estafao

» Sauce:
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 cup vinegar
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced

Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper. Heat oil in large pot over medium heat. Add sugar and stir until sugar browns; be careful not to burn. Add chicken and turn to brown.

Combine sauce ingredients. Add to pot. Cover and simmer until chicken is cooked through, 30 to 40 minutes.

Add cornstarch mixture and stir until thickened. Serves 6.

Shrimp Kadu

Combine shrimp in pot with onions, tomatoes, garlic and salt. Cook until shrimp begins to turn pink.

Add water, coconut milk and beans. Simmer until beans are cooked. Serves 6.