AARP Hearing Center
![natasha feldman holding plate with stack of food on it; blue background with diamond shapes on it natasha feldman holding plate with stack of food on it; blue background with diamond shapes on it](https://cdn.aarp.net/content/dam/aarpe/en/home/benefits-discounts/members-only-access/info-2023/natasha-feldman-dinner-party-cookbook/_jcr_content/root/container_main/container_body_main/container_body1/container_body_cf/container_image/articlecontentfragment/cfimage.coreimg.50.932.png/content/dam/aarp/members-only/member-benefits/2023/05/1140-natasha-feldman-dinner-promo.png)
Whenever the subject of hosting a dinner party comes up in conversation, chef and cooking show host Natasha Feldman often hears the lament: “I love to cook, but I’m too intimidated to host people for dinner,” or “I don’t know how to cook. How could I ever have friends over?” Her newest book, The Dinner Party Project: A No-Stress Guide to Food With Friends (April 2023), shares the secrets to throwing fun and delicious no-stress gatherings.
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Cook With Natasha
Feldman shared three recipes from The Dinner Party Project for AARP members to try:
This steak recipe is low-stress and tastes professional. Try it with either the Pistachio-Date Salsa Verde Sauce or Bistro Compound Butter.
A Very Adult Salad (a.k.a. Grapies and Greenies)
Sometimes you just want a salad that seems fancy, and this salad seems fancy.
For me, the joy of this dessert is how easy it is. You’re just a few stirs and snips away from childhood nostalgia!
Feldman, who appeared on the Yahoo digital series Cinema & Spice and the YouTube series Nosh With Tash, shares advice gleaned from hosting dinner parties for 15 years.
She shares recipes and tips on her Instagram, @noshwithtash, and on her website, NoshWithTash.com, and takes the same friendly approach to cooking in her new book, providing details on how to menu-plan, what to cook when you don’t feel like cooking and practical tips on how to ensure everyone enjoys the party — especially the host — and how to forgive yourself if they don’t!
For Feldman, 36, dinner parties are vehicles to forge connections between friends and strangers. The Los Angeles-based chef discovered her knack for hosting dinner parties when she attended culinary school and tested recipes at home. She shared the dishes with her roommates and told them to invite friends over, then those friends invited friends. This evolved into a structured weekly gathering where, as Feldman writes in the book, she “collected” her favorite people. The dinner parties are no longer weekly, so they’re even more special when they do happen.
Two elements are paramount when hosting dinner parties: the food and the people. In regard to the former, Feldman’s recipes yield six servings which, she says, is the ideal maximum number of dinner party guests. “I set it at six, but I really only did that because I think four is also a very lovely dinner party,” Feldman tells AARP. “Then it's nice because you have leftovers, so that you can have them for lunch."
Much like Feldman has collected people over the years, she’s collected recipes. “It's always funny where you find recipes,” she says. "I have a taco recipe in the book that I got from a [food] truck in Cordova, Alaska, where they do the Copper River salmon.” The recipe, “fish-fry tacos with smoky mayo,” draws inspiration from the various catch-of-the-day salmon species that the Alaskan taco stand would incorporate. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure-style taco, she writes in the book.
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