Your Summer Cooking Tool Kit
by Melissa Clark
COOKS BREATHE a collective sigh of relief at the height of summer. All the luscious fruits and vegetables you’ve been craving for months are at their peak, and nobody wants or expects you to spend all day in the kitchen wrestling with them.
Nor do summer ingredients need it. This time of year, the best cooking is all about ease and simplicity, leaving you more time to enjoy the results of your (minimal) labor — preferably outside in the shade, sipping a cool drink.
o help you do just that, here is a guide to the techniques and ingredients you can turn to all summer long. Think of it as your tool kit. It will teach you how to grill pretty much everything. It will suggest flavor combinations that you can apply to everything from chilled blender soups to spiced nuts. And it will give you the freedom to create your own memorable dishes.
Just bear in mind that when it comes to summer cooking, less is more.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/15/dining/your-summer-cooking-tool-kit.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=LargeMediaHeadlineSum&module=photo-spot-region®ion=photo-spot&WT.nav=photo-spot
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Melissa Clark is terrific. I like her videos at the NY Times and she also does interviews on our local public radio. She always has something new to tell me, and that's kind of hard to do when you live with a food professional and have been exposed to cooking tips for nearly three decades.
The parts I liked best were the salad dressings/marinades and the general rules for cold soups/smoothies. I was wondering this morning what to do with this delicious zucchini juice that I saved from making zucchini pizza crust. Now I know!
Thanks for posting, elleng. 
Cher
And your address is . . . 
I'm sipping it now, as a "breakfast" of sorts.
I used the cold soup part of her guide, combining zucchini juice, buttermilk, a little sour cream, a little heavy cream, and also a small amount of Greek yogurt. For seasoning, I put in diced rosemary and mint. Then a whirl in the blender.
For toppings, I used more mint (easy way to get it "to taste" without going back to the blender) and rosemary, but also chopped yellow pepper and toasted hazelnuts.
Divine!!
I used The Flavor Bible to help me see what went with zucchini. (Answer: just about everything.)
This terrific book takes every food and puts it in an A-Z list. Under the food, it puts all the taste-compatible accompaniments. Makes it easy to come up with your own recipes!
Cher