A complete guide to planning and hosting tasting parties, this book will appeal to everyone who is too busy to throw a dinner party but who loves to entertain, and foodie sophisticates searching for that best olive oil, wine, cheese, or other food and beverage. Tasting combines the growing trend for food appreciation with the popular book-group phenomenon. Introduces the 4 W’s of tasting: what, where, when and why, for developing a sensitive and sophisticated palate. Offers 10 different tastings, each focusing on a different food or drink, such as cheese, extra virgin olive oil and chocolate. Each gives practical advice for savoring food in a structured way to understand your palate. A full guide for hosting easy-to-organize tasting sessions with friends, with ‘cheat sheets’ and taste cards. Tastings are suitable for large events, one-on-one romantic occasions or independent tasting.
Dina Cheney, a graduate of Columbia College, Columbia University and the Institute of Culinary Education, is a freelance writer, tasting host, and former cooking teacher. The author of Tasting Club (DK Publishing), Dina writes for a number of local and national publications. Previously, she taught hundreds of students to cook through her business, Cooking by Heart. In this capacity, Dina was featured on Fox 5 News, as well as in The New York Times, the New York Daily News, and more.
Like a modern-day Virgil and Beatrice, the Romagnolis, cohosts of the PBS series The Romagnolis’ Table, conduct a breathless journey through the paradisiacal food and wine regions of Italy. Beginning at the northern Alpine border of Italy, the two move slowly south, savoring food and wine as well as people and places. Their love of the country shines through their adoring descriptions of locales. Chiavari, in the northwestern region of Liguria, is an elegantly simple, relaxed and pleasant city, facing a sheltered sea and untouched by winter. In Emilia-Romagno, the Romagnolis set off on a quest to find the perfect prosciutto ham and Parmigiano cheese for which the region is famous. They discover not only a prosciutto that ideally combines creamy marbled fat and salty crispness, they also stumble across a violin museum where they listen raptly to the lush strains of a 1715 Stradivarius that transports them to the baroque period. In Calabria, a young boy brings the Romagnolis a meal of super-fresh braided mozzarella, just-picked garden tomatoes, a warm loaf of country bread and a carafe of cool, dry and sharp as a blade white wine, which they declare is the best meal they have ever had. Recipes accompany every chapter, and the Romagnolis’ intimate storytelling and love of Italian food and culture carry readers on an unforgettable journey.
There’s a lot more to wine and food pairing than memorizing a few simple rules. The true connoisseur knows the subtleties…and in this book, a wine expert shares his secrets.
Mix, make, shake, and stir like a pro!