It's time to 'cue up the grill

  
While it's still officially spring, unofficially it's summer and it sure has felt like summer during the past few days.

Here, in Ventura, it rarely gets really hot because we're next to the ocean and there's almost always a sea breeze. Occasionally, we get Santa Ana winds, which can be very dry and hot and can last for a few uncomfortable days of high, gusty backwards winds blowing all kinds of dust and ... stuff, from the mountains. But these usually happen at the end of the summer, rather than the beginning.

As the result of having few hot days, most Venturans don't have air conditioning. And because it always, always cools down at night, we can tough it up and get through the days when the temperatures actually rise into ... gasp! ... the 80s. Oh yeah, the pets are panting, I'm sweating and the plants are wilting. Our vet said that pets from Ventura tend to exhibit signs of heat stress way before animals living elsewhere. He kind of gets a kick out of it, noting that we've all become acclimated to comfortable temperatures, or wimps I believe was the actual term.

My buddy Kaia came over today and it was one of the few days it was warm enough to go swimming in our pool. When we bought this house, it came with an above-ground pool. It's a pretty nice pool, nothing fancy, but it's a full-size backyard pool. It costs us a small fortune to keep it running and to keep the water clean enough not to alarm the dudes who fly over our house with helicopters looking for dirty pools. Rob acted as though I was paranoid for saying this until there was one of those channel 7 or KCAL 9 or some other TV station that did a big story on dirty pools -- with pictures from helicopters -- and how they're breeding places for West Nile disease.

We've discussed getting rid of it because it's usually in the low 70s around here and too cool to swim. It's getting old too and the liner looks as though it will burst any moment. But it's a big hassle to take it down because we live so close to the ocean and you have to let all the chlorine get out of the pool before you can dump the water. Then we have to hire someone to take the whole thing away. We can probably resell the filter and pump. We've decided that we'd like to replace the pool with a hot tub, which would be a lot of fun on our chilly nights.

But today Kaia and I spent some time swimming around the pool, which was really pleasant. Then I barbecued. One of the other cool things we got with our house was a really nice brick barbecue near the back covered patio area. The barbecue has a tray that lowers and raises on which you place the coals. Unfortunately said tray has completely rusted through over the years. We've taken to using heavy duty aluminum foil to hold the coals.

A few weeks ago, I got a charcoal chimney. These are fabulous devices that allow you to light the coals without using lighter fluid. They consist of two chambers, top and bottom. The charcoal is placed in the top chamber and the bottom chamber is filled with crunched up newspaper. The metal dividing the chambers is filled with holes and there are holes on the side to fuel the flames. It's a ingenious little device.

The first time I used it, I kept the coals in until they were grey. Unfortunately the resulting heat concentrated at the bottom of the chimney actually melted the aluminum foil. I've replaced the foil with a cookie sheet, which holds the coals and can stand getting hotter than the foil can. And the cool part about using a chimney is there is no lighter fluid flavor. It's best to dump the coals out when the fire seems well established in the coals, but the top ones are still black.

Because I can adjust the height of the fire, I can create a two-level fire with no problem. This comes in handy for steaks, which should be seared on both with a high flame and then cooked with a lower flame.

We experimented with rubs today; using three different Penzey's concoctions on the meat. I also made hamburgers, which were flavored with Penzey's English Rib rub.

Cooking hamburgers on the grill is one of the most difficult things for a cook to do well, especially now when all hamburgers have to be overdone to kill any bacteria that may be lurking in our meat. It's a sad commentary that we live in a world where the can poison our meat with bacteria in filthy packing plants, and rather than solving the problem, we are all condemned to eating gray hockey pucks.

But as ridiculous as it is, we still have to do it to be safe. There is an exception. If you go to a old fashioned butcher, who grinds his/her own meat, you can be a lot more sure that the ground meat you get is safe. It may cost more and require a special trip, but it is so worth it to be able to have a medium rare hamburger again.

There are a few cardinal rules to cooking hamburger. If you follow these, you will stand a much better chance of getting heaven on a bun, or my very favorite summer food -- a grilled hamburger.

Hamburger rules
* Never, ever press down on a hamburger when you are cooking it. You are pushing out the juices and making the meat tough.
* If you want the sides of your burger to be flat, indent the burger in the middle a little bit when you form the patties. The natural tendency of the meat is to ball up as it cooks, and this combats that.
* Speaking of forming patties, form them quickly, and handle them long enough for the meat to stick together, but don't overhandle the meat or it will become tough. And always wash your hand with antibacterial soap after handling raw meat. Make sure to wash or wipe every surface you touched or the raw meat touched. And never, ever use the plate you used for the raw meat for cooked meat.
* Try to flip the burgers as few times as possible. You can see the meat cooking on the first side to get a feel for when to flip them the first time. You can judge how done they are in part by looking at the juices that come out of the burgers. If they're bloody, the meat still isn't done. A well-done burger will shrink significantly and become quite firm.
* If you notice blood on the plate, you may want to microwave the burgers for about a minute. Some people recommend doing this as a matter of course with burgers and I will do it with supermarket meat.