Hi, I’m Cate. Welcome to Saturdays with Frank, my blog about everyday rituals – the things we do to make ordinary days feel special.
For me it starts with Saturday night dinners with my husband, John. (If you’re wondering who Frank is, I’m getting to that!) We do everything we can to keep Saturday nights for ourselves. We stay home. I cook a dinner-party-worthy meal for just the two of us. We light candles and open a good bottle of wine. We linger at the table.
There’s always music, and if it’s Saturday night it’s Frank Sinatra. It’s a tradition that began years ago when we were just starting out, beginning to spend more date nights in instead of going out to eat all the time. John loved my cooking and I loved having someone appreciative to cook for. One Saturday night John put on Frank Sinatra because he thought it seemed like “dinner music” – something actual adults would listen to. Dining by candlelight and listening to Frank felt a little like playing house to us back then, but the habit stuck and now it’s non-negotiable.
So, Saturday nights are sacred to us, but that’s just the beginning. I think it’s just in my nature to want to build traditions and celebrations around the things I enjoy. John teases me: whenever I discover a new fun thing to do or place to visit, he’ll say, “So I guess now we’re going to have to do this all the time?” I know he doesn’t really mind.
What are your everyday rituals?
Thank you for reading! Contact me at cate@saturdayswithfrank.com
In anticipation of you asking, I’ll answer these questions:
Why do some recipes give the weights for ingredients and some do not?
In cooking, the amounts of ingredients can often be estimated. It’s not going to change the outcome of a soup if you use 3/4 cup of chopped onion instead of 2/3 cup. But in baking, success hinges on precision, so if it’s cookies you’re making and the ingredient you over-use is flour, your cookies will turn out heavy and dry. If there’s one ingredient you should always weigh when baking, it’s flour. Here’s why:
To measure a proper cup of all-purpose flour by volume, first stir and fluff the flour so that it’s not compacted. Then, with a spoon, lift some flour from the canister and lightly sprinkle it into a dry cup measure. Keep going until the flour is mounded over the top of the cup, then gently scrape across the top edge of the cup with the back of a knife to level the flour with the top of the cup. Do this correctly and the amount of flour in your one-cup measure will weigh 4 1/4 ounces (120 grams). Just now, as an experiment, I dipped a one-cup measure directly into a newly-opened bag of compacted, un-fluffed flour, scooped it full of flour, leveled off the top, and weighed the contents. The flour weighed 5 3/4 ounces (160 grams). If measuring by volume requires such a specific technique – and produces results this unpredictable – the only way to know for sure that you’re using the right amount of flour is to use a scale.
One more note on this subject: Annoyingly, if you consult various sources you’ll find different information about volume-to-weight relationships. Some will tell you that a cup of flour should weigh 4 1/2 ounces or even 5 ounces. There is no authoritative source that’s right while everyone else is wrong. (And you wonder why people find baking intimidating?) The important thing is to use a scale for flour, and ideally to use recipes that provide the weight as well as volume for flour so you know what standard the recipe developer is following. I use this chart from King Arthur Flour.
Why do recipes provide two different measurements for kosher salt?
Diamond Crystal and Morton’s are two commonly-available brands of kosher salt. They are not interchangeable. Diamond Crystal’s flakes are coarser and take up double the volume when measured. That means that 1 teaspoon of Morton’s salt is equivalent to 2 teaspoons of Diamond Crystal. If you were to substitute Morton’s salt in a recipe that was tested with and written for Diamond Crystal, your dish would come out twice as salty.
I use Diamond Crystal salt, but I provide the quantities for both brands in most recipes for those who prefer to use Morton’s.
Why do some recipes specify using European-style butter and some do not?
European-style butter has a higher butterfat content than American butter and is widely considered to be better for baking. I use European-style butter for everything — cooking, baking, and on the table — but where it really matters is in baking. If a recipe for pasta or chicken calls for “unsalted butter”, it means it doesn’t make a difference what kind of butter you use. But in recipes for baked goods, I will specify that unsalted European-style butter is preferred, because that’s what I used when I developed and tested the recipe. If you use an American butter, you might have a slightly different result. It probably won’t be noticeable, but I’m just telling you what butter I use to achieve the results I’ve achieved, for full transparency.
Why don’t the recipes specify the total time it takes to complete the dish?
It’s common for blog recipes to specify how long it takes to prep ingredients for a dish, and the overall elapsed time for completing it. The reason I don’t do that is because it can be misleading.
If a dish calls for browning something on the stovetop, then combining it with other ingredients and baking it in the oven, does the browning step count as “cooking” time or “prep” time? And what if, while that ingredient is browning, you’re multitasking, mixing and chopping other ingredients? Then you’re “cooking” and “prepping” at the same time, and how does a recipe writer quantify that?
Everyone has their own rhythm for cooking, not to mention varying skill levels that can make a big difference in efficiency and speed. I always try to make the most efficient use of my time in the kitchen. For example, let’s say a recipe starts with sautéing an onion, then adding several other chopped vegetables. Cook A chops all the vegetables first before starting to heat the pan. Cook B heats the pan while chopping the onion, then starts the onion cooking while chopping everything else. A’s process takes 25 minutes while B’s takes 15.
For my Saturday night game plans, I provide overall time estimates because it’s a step by step plan for making a whole meal, and includes detailed tips on how to sequence and combine tasks. For individual recipes on the blog, I don’t provide an overall time, but I do provide time ranges for steps that involve stove-top, oven and microwave cooking, as well as for cooling, chilling and resting.
I encourage you to read all the way through a recipe first, make note of the time ranges for each step and come up with a rough total for all the steps combined. If there are ingredients that you’ll be using in early steps that will require chopping, shredding, thawing, melting or bringing to room temperature, build in time at the beginning to get those ingredients ready to go. But also look for opportunities to make use of any hands-off time (waiting for soup to simmer, liquid to reduce, etc.) to prep ingredients that aren’t needed until later on. Once you have a rough idea of how long the entire dish will take, add a few minutes of buffer time. Most important: don’t rush, and enjoy the process.
