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The tasting party is so simple, it's a wonder it hasn't caught on. Pick a food (cheese, chocolate), buy a few varieties, present nicely with accompanying nibbles and drinks and you're done. No cooking, no panic, no five-hour cleanup the next day.

"People are excited about the not having to cook part," Dina Cheney says with a laugh, on the phone from her home in Connecticut. In fact, it's one of the reasons why the cooking teacher wrote Tasting Club ($30, DK Publishing), a gorgeous how-to guide to the concept.

"I saw a need for an easier way to entertain, because I don't think people have time to throw dinner parties any more."

Instead of going all out on a formal meal, a host invites friends to an event where the focus is on tasting, rather than eating. Through sampling, savouring and talking about different varieties of a particular food or beverage, guests get a chance to explore what makes their taste buds tick.

"It's a fantastic icebreaker," she says. "It's fun learning about the palates of friends and family."

Cheney's top picks for tastings are chocolate and tea, both of which get chapters in her book, along with wine, cheese, honey, olive oil, cured meats, balsamic vinegar, apples and beer. For each, she provides a buying guide, background information, tasting vocabulary and suggestions for accompaniments (salty blue cheese, for example, is a great prelude to dark chocolate). "It's putting the education into entertaining," she says.

Two ideas that didn't make the cut were coffee and ice cream, due mainly to temperature constraints. "Whenever you're tasting," Cheney explains, "you don't want things too cold or hot. You can freeze the palate, so you experience the cold, not the taste."

Still, both are possible, she says. For the ice cream: Take it out of the freezer 15 to 20 minutes before. For the coffee: Use a "cupping" technique, pouring nine ounces of waters 195 to 205 degrees Fahrenheit over two tablespoons of espresso grind.

Cheney's main tasting tip is to have a strong theme. "Don't just buy three kinds of chocolates." Focus in on dark chocolate, for example. "You want to buy good-quality ingredients. If you're slowing down and tasting it, it should be worth it."

It's also important to cleanse the palate after each round (use cool water and mild-flavoured bread or crackers) and, above all else, to try new things.

"The more you taste -- and slow down and taste especially -- you learn what you love and how to please yourself with food," she says. "You improve your life in general."