The summer my grandmother taught me to make tamales, she rarely spoke of measurements. She would press a bit of masa between her fingers, frown, and add a splash of broth without ever consulting a cup. When I begged her for the recipe in writing, she laughed and said the recipe lived in her hands, not on paper. Years later, standing in my own kitchen, I finally understood that what she had refused to write down was not stinginess but a kind of trust: she believed I would learn the dough the way she had, by failing at it until my fingers knew the answer.