Happy National Hamburger Month! In honor of this made-up celebration of all things burger, let's get to the meat of the matter. When the weather is nice -- usually sunny, but let's be honest about where we live and include mildly foggy -- it's time to grill. And although you can get fancy on your Weber, nothing is easier or more satisfying to cook outside than an all-beef burger (unless of course you're vegetarian, in which case this post isn't for you). Plus after a winter of braises and stews, nothing inaugurates summer like a perfectly grilled burger sitting on a fluffy bun.

But not all hamburgers are made equally. There is an enormous difference between handmade burgers and the patties you find in a grocery store freezer section, which are really nothing short of inferior-grade beef hockey pucks. Plus making truly fine burgers takes only about five to ten minutes longer than preparing the frozen variety (depending on if you grind your own meat), and the time spent is well worth it. And if you're still not convinced, you can read this great piece in the New York Times called Anatomy of a Burger which details the process meat corporations go through to produce their ground meat. Just saying...

Please note that this article has nothing to do with turkey, lamb or pork burgers, and there are no discussions on toppings or condiments. No, our attention here is solely on beef patties: how to make, season and cook them. That's all. So with that in mind, let's now focus on how making a great burger is really a fairly plain and simple endeavor. Here are 10 helpful tips to keep in mind:

10 Tips for Making Great Hamburgers

1. Purchase the best meat possible. Burgers are really all about the meat, so don't skimp. Buy the best quality beef you can find. I'm not taking about filet mignon here. Rather I mean the quality of the overall beef instead of the cut. No shock to anyone who knows me, I prefer grass-fed organic beef, preferably raised locally. Environmental and health reasons aside, grass-fed beef has a more intense meaty flavor than corn-fed commercially produced meat and can stand up to the condiments you'll add later. Yes there is a price difference, but we're talking about ground beef here so instead of paying $3.99 a pound you may pay $6.99 or $7.99 a pound, which will feed a family of four. Not a bad price.

2. If you have a meat grinder then by all means take it out of the storage closet. Use a mix of sirloin and chuck. If you don't have one then be sure to purchase high-quality ground meat from the type of place where the butchers actually grind the meat on the premises and know which cuts are used.

3. Use meat that has about 15 - 20% fat (that's 80 - 85% lean on the label). Fat equals flavor in a burger. It also prevents the meat from drying out on the grill. If you want a leaner meal, then you probably shouldn't be eating a hamburger.

4. Don't include extraneous ingredients. Avoid eggs, bread crumbs and anything else that will detract from the beef flavor. These ingredients are for meatloaf, which is a fine dish but isn't a burger.

5. Keep the seasonings simple so the taste of the beef shines through. I use only salt, pepper, Worcestershire Sauce and a little onion or shallot. You can also add some chopped herbs, Dijon mustard or onion powder. And if your meat seems a little dry, add in about 1 Tbsp heavy cream for a pound of meat to add richness.

6. Don't over handle the meat as doing so toughens the burger. The meat doesn't need to be compressed into a patty for it to hold together.

7. Shape thin patties. When you cook meat, it contracts in on itself, so thickly-shaped burgers end up resembling meatballs. It's better to include two thin patties on your sandwich then one chunky burger that is unevenly cooked. You should also make your burgers a little wider than your bun as the patty will shrink in size when you cook it.

8. Press a little dimple into the center of the burger to keep it from bulging out when you cook it. As mentioned earlier, meat shrinks when it cooks and so the center has a tendency to swell in the middle. Indenting will counteract this.

9. Grill with the cover on at medium-high heat. Do not overcook. We usually barbecue our burgers for about three minutes per side for medium-rare meat and four to five minutes per side for burgers that are cooked through for the kids.

10. Don't press on your burgers while grilling them. I really can't stress this enough. If you press on your patties with a spatula you are pushing all the juices out and you're going to end up with dry burgers.

That's it. Easy right? Now if only we can convince Mother Nature to give us a sunny summer.

In the United States, we have this idea that Italian meatballs are best piled on top of a huge mound of spaghetti noodles. Remember the song, spaghetti with meatballs, all covered with cheese? Well, the only way I've come across polpette en Italia is on their own, usually in a simple, tart pomodoro sauce. I've eaten polpette everywhere from Bologna to Brindisi, and while there are subtle differences in each region's traditional recipe, not once have I seen a menu offering spaghetti con polpette.

Perhaps they serve spaghetti with meatballs somewhere in the country (and if you know where, please feel free to chime in), but according to my friend's mom Angela, an incredible home cook in the Puglia region, meatballs are generally served on their own in the second piatti (second course), while pasta is served separately for the primi piatti course, or first course.

These days I'm in Firenze, or Florence, so the recipe I'm going to share with you is uniquely fiorentino. This dish comes from the kind woman who runs the hotel I'm staying at, who, when it came up in conversation that I was writing this post, was all too excited to share a bit of her family's culinary history with the rest of the world. Her only condition was that I not mention her name and that I should inform you all that American meatballs are missing the necessary addition of cured pork, and that on all of her trips to the states, she had to stop ordering meatballs because they were too bland for her. So, there you go. More bacon!

Remember how good slices of roast beef smothered with gravy tasted when you were a kid? If you're like me, you haven't eaten this meal in years, and maybe even decades. Other than a holiday standing rib roast, most people now forgo the once archetypal Sunday supper of roast beef, including me. Eating copious amounts of beef is no longer fashionable, with the good reason that it's simply not healthy for you. But when I was confronted with an eye of round roast recently, I just couldn't help myself. Nutrition and food fads took a back seat for the night: I had to make a traditional roast beef with gravy.

So what was I doing with an eye of round roast in the first place? Well a few months ago I bought an 1/8 of a grass-fed Sonoma cow. A friend called to say that someone had backed out at the last moment of their share, and when pressed to find someone who would buy into a cow at the last second, she thought of me (which makes sense if you know me). So I now have a freezer full of various cuts of beef -- from soup bones and ground chuck to short ribs and eye of round.

Remembering that my mother always used the eye of round for her roast beef, I started to reminisce about my childhood dinners. The idea of beef with gravy and potatoes sounded too good to pass up and so I started searching for a recipe. After digging out numerous cookbooks (including my mega The Essential New York Times Cookbook and some cumulative family meals cookbooks) and searching online, I was surprised to find that there are hardly any current recipes for roast beef. I hear America's Test Kitchen has a great slow-bake method, but I don't have that book. And so I did what I should have done in the first place; I called my mom. Her recipe was simple: salt and pepper the roast and then bake at 325 for 20 minutes per pound. That's it.

Easy enough, but I was fearful that the roast would be dry, so I updated the directions a bit, cooking the meat as I do a chicken: in an enamel cast-iron Dutch oven with the lid on and then raising the temperature and uncovering for 10-15 minutes so the outside browns nicely.

The dinner couldn't have been a bigger hit with my family. My kids devoured their first helping and then had seconds while raving about the gravy. The meat was tender and juicy inside but with a nice crust on the outside, and there was plenty of jus to make a large batch of gravy. Plus there were leftovers for sandwiches the next day.

Now I'm not going to be making roast beef on a regular basis, but I am looking forwarding to revisiting this comforting childhood favorite in another month or two.

Updated Classic Roast Beef

Makes: Enough for 4-6 people

Ingredients:
1 2 1/2 - 3 pound eye of round beef roast
Salt
Freshly cracked ground pepper
1/2 tsp your favorite dried herb (I used thyme)

Beef Gravy
Dripping from the roast beef
3/4 - 1 cup beef stock or broth
2 Tbsp flour (plus more if needed
1 Tbsp butter
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Sprinkle salt, pepper and herbs on your roast and set in a baking pan (I used a large enamel cast-iron Dutch oven, but you can also use a regular pan and then cover the roast tightly with foil).

3. Cook roast for 20 - 25 minutes covered. Turn up heat to 400 degrees, uncover the roast and then set it back in the oven. Bake for 15 more minutes to brown.

4. Check temperature (you want your roast to be 145 degrees in the center if you like it medium rare or 140 degrees if you like it rare in the middle. I'm not providing temperatures for medium - well done because then the rest of the roast will be too dried out) and then remove the roast from the oven when ready.

5. Set roast on a board or plate to rest (tenting with foil) while you make your gravy.

6. Set roasting pan on the stove top. If the drippings have a lot of fat in them, drain all but about 1 Tbsp fat out. If you don’t have much fat, add 2 Tbsp butter instead of one in the next step.

7. Heat pan to medium and incorporate the butter into your pan drippings while you add in the flour to create a roux. Add in your beef stock or broth and stir until the gravy is smooth. If it’s too watery, mix about 1 tsp flour into 1/8 cup of broth or stock to create a slurry and then add to the gravy. Add salt and pepper to taste.

8. After your roast has rested for 5-7 minutes, cut it into slices and serve topped with gravy.

Last weekend, my oldest friends in the world threw a little potluck party for my birthday. While Shannon busied herself with preparing snarky party decorations, such as papering one wall with several copies of my 9th grade class photo (complete with braces and Sun-In orange hair) and supplying guests with empty thought bubbles to tape over my head, Craig took charge of the main event-- espetada. Guests were invited to bring food that I have discussed here on this website.

Fortunately, only one person followed those directions. Guests brought whatever they felt like bringing, which suited me just fine. Especially well-suited for my mood was my friend Sean's offering-- his own signature cocktail cleverly called the Thin Mint Julep. It's like eating a Girl Scout cookie followed by a slug of bourbon. It made me feel like some upper-middle class, slightly depressed den mother.

After a bit of fun, only some of which was at my expense, it was grill time. What else would you expect at a summertime party? Craig, who is half Portuguese (Azorean, to be exact), decided to make a beef dish that hails not from the Azores, but from a competing island-- Madeira.

If a lousy shrub hadn't already taken the name, I would have dubbed this beef dish The Pride of Madeira. It's that good. So I suppose the name espetada will just have to do.

Espetada lends itself to informality. Hot chunks of meat and juice-soaked crusty bread are like that. I went so far as to eat my dinner with my hands. Because, well, after a couple of Thin Mint Juleps, I'm like that.

This is just my small way of thanking Craig and Shannon and all of my fellow guests for all of their kindness. And fun. Oh, and absinthe.

I feel like one hell of a lucky guy.

Espetada

Serves 10 to 15 with an eye towards leftovers.

This Portuguese dish is the forefather of Brazilian Churrasco, which goes back to the days when Portugal was a major world player (read: a very, very long time ago.) Espetada is typically served with skewers of tomato, onion, and/or zucchini or other squashes. This preparation deals exclusively with the meat. I however, think that onion and tomato are important to the success of this dish. Especially the tomato. Rub a bit of the charred stuff on some bread which has been soaked in the meat juice. You will thank me for it, I promise.

Unless you are a vegetarian, of course.

Ingredients:

8 to 9 pounds of beef loin, cubed into 2-inch pieces.

1 whole head of garlic, chopped and ground into a rough paste

About 1 ½ cups Madeira wine (on the drier side. This is a Portuguese recipe, after all. Port, however, would be too sweet. Don't even think about using Marsala, because that's Sicilian. Besides, Sicilians aren't exactly famous for their beef dishes. Not that the Portuguese are either, but that is besides the point.)

½ cup extra virgin olive oil

1 cup (8 oz.) of butter, softened. Salted or unsalted.

Coarse salt. Kosher or Sea. Lots of it.

Crushed black pepper, to taste.

5 to 6 Bay Laurel* branches, ½ to ¾" in diameter and long enough to extend past the edge of your grill by 6" because you'll need a handle. Trim them of twigs and leaves; scrub them well.

1 to 2 loaves of rough country bread. Hearty is more likely the better word.

Preparation:

1. In a large, shallow baking dish, rub the cubed beef with garlic paste and crushed black pepper. Add the Madeira and olive oil to marinate. Cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight.

2. At least two hours prior to grilling, soak bay branches in cold water.

3. Cut a slit into each cube of meat and skewer onto branches. Cubes are allowed to touch each other. Leave about 6" on the ends of each branch meat-free, for purposes of handling the skewers when grilling time comes.

4. Once you have been liberated from the use of sharp knives, pour yourself some of the Madeira, as Craig suggests, just to keep in spirit. Drink.

5. Rub espetada generously with salt, but do not fully encrust. Cut bread into thick slices and line a large serving platter with them. Fire up your grill.

6. If you are grilling vegetable skewers as an accompaniment, grill them first, then unskewer and cover to keep warm.

7. Place your skewers 4 to 6" directly over a hot wood charcoal fire. We chose to remove the grill grate and be rather rustic. A grill grate, however, will ensure more even cooking. Rugged image or efficiency-- take your pick. Brush the meat with marinade as the mood strikes you. Cook until medium or whatever your preference. This is not, I should tell you, a rare-meat dish.

8. When meat has finished cooking, unskewer directly onto the awaiting platter of bread, covering as much surface area as possible. Dot the still-hot meat with softened butter to let it drip down the meat and soak into the bread. Let rest for about 5 minutes.

9. Devour.

*California Bay Laurel, our not-surprisingly local tree, has a much stronger flavor than European Bay Trees. As a result, the traditional rubbing of ground bay leaf into the meat has been omitted. As a fun, flora-geek side note, the California Bay Laurel, or Umbelluria californica, is also known as the Oregon Myrtle, the Pepperwood, and the Headache Tree.

I can't recall a month with more spectacular culinary programs and special events than this August. In fact, for the entire month of August the Commonwealth Club is hosting their Bay Gourmet series called "How We Eat" with what must be a record-breaking 31 events! The events actually begin tomorrow, the last day of July. It includes dinners, demonstrations, panel discussions, authors, chefs, nutritionists and more.

If you've never seen the Hungry Planet book (now out in paperback), do check out this online slideshow.


Here are a few programs that particularly caught our eye. Check out the entire schedule online.

Eating the Right Way

A panel discussion focused on optimal nutrition and minimizing the hype. Panelists will be:

Kevin Lunny, Owner, Drakes Bay Oyster Company
Jessica Prentice, Author, Full Moon Feast; Co-owner, Three Stone Hearth Community Supported Kitchen
Helene York, Director, Bon Appetit Management Company Foundation
Naomi Starkman, Communications Director, Slow Food Nation - Moderator

Where: Club Office 595 Market St., 2nd Floor San Francisco
When: August 6, 2008, 5:30 p.m. wine and cheese reception, 6 p.m. program
How: $12 Club/Slow Food Nation members, $18 non-members. Purchase tickets.

The "Other" Chinatown: Shopping with Naomi Friedman

Explore the cultural, commercial and gastronomical treats of San Francisco's Inner Richmond with Naomi Friedman, Culinary Educator. Includes lunch.

Where: Corner of Clement and 11th Ave.
When: August 9, 2008, 9:15 a.m. check-in, 9:30 a.m.- 1 p.m. program
How: Cost: $70 members, $82 non-members. Purchase tickets.

The Provenance of Beef (The Great Steak-Wine Adventure)

Enjoy an evening sure to delight the senses: an interactive steak-tasting event featuring four signature styles of beef from artisan producers of natural or organic beef, paired with four fabulous wines. Panelists:

Armand De Maigret, General Manager, Atalon, Napa Valley
Mac Magruder, Grass-Finished Beef and Pastured Pork Producer, Potter Valley
Marsha McBride, Executive Chef and Owner, Cafe Rouge
Carrie C. Oliver, Founder & CEO, The Oliver Ranch Company & Artisan Beef Institute

Where: Teatro ZinZanni, Pier 27/29, San Francisco
When: August 11, 2008, 6 p.m. check-in, 6:15-8:30 p.m. program
How: $65 members, $80 non-members. Purchase tickets

Ah, the impending new year is all about lists, isn't it? Well, here's yet another one.

Recent tragic events, human and animal alike, at the San Francisco Zoo has me doing several things:

1. I'm snatching up my very plump and extremely domesticated cats and kissing them all over, while demanding to know how their sister could behave so much like...well, a tiger.

2. Swearing I will never go to another zoo to gawk at animals. They may be alive and safe from hunters' rifles, but they are still miserable unless they happen to be lucky enough to secure roams in the spacious San Diego Wild Animal Park.

3. Thinking about primal urges for meat.

While I do live a fairly vegetarian, multi-grainal, or pescatarian lifestyle, it's more from ease and quickness of prep and less of actual desire. I do love my fish and vegs, but I also love, crave, and need on a deep, dark, and primal level, meat.

When hit with a specific meat need, it's usually for how a certain restaurant prepares it. Like, if I'm feeling porkish, it doesn't follow that I'll be satisfied with any old piece of pig.

My Top Meat Places in San Francisco

Pork: Late-night or middle of the day, nothing beats a burrito stuffed with thick, shaggy pieces of carnitas at El Farolito. Also, because I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since Jen reminded me in her post, the shelling beans with Sofrito at SPQR and sweet and smoky Suppenkuche's cured pork chop.

Beef: I haven't yet found my designated "favorite steak" place in San Francisco, but the Slanted Door's Shaking Beef still makes me very happy; I'm really sorry to see that it hasn't yet made it onto the menu at Out the Door in the San Francisco Center. When it comes to the ground stuff, Burgermeister is the place I go back to again and again. That said, Zuni Cafe's lunch-time burger is pretty spectacular, even if the ridiculously greasy focaccia bun has me wiping my hands down every three seconds.

Chicken: I'm sorry to be predictable, but I'm still not bored nor have I ever failed to reach complete nirvana with Zuni's roast chicken. However, Ziryab Grill's sumac chicken with velvety oyster mushrooms and Ton Kiang's deceptively plain-looking salt-baked chicken run it a very close, very delicious second.

Duck: I'm very choosy about duck and I don't order it every time I see it at the menu, but Paul K's Syrian Spiced Duck with pomegranate molasses and Ton Kiang's peking duck get my picky vote.

Lamb: This is my favorite meat, but I have yet to find a place that satisfies my need for tender, rare. Until I find it, I have to be satisfied with my own lamb chops: salt and pepper, broiled for 3-4 minutes on each side. Though I haven't yet been, I have suspicions that Kokkari might scratch this particular itch, however I'm open to suggestions...