Aarti Parties Into A Second Season

The latest winner of The Next Food Network Star, Aarti Sequeira, has been picked up for a second season. She’s been working hard on new recipes and will begin taping 13 new episodes for Aarti Party in Los Angeles in October. I think she’s done a pretty good job, although I hope the names of the recipes are a bit less whimsical.

Aarti Party - Part Two

Aarti Party with Aarti Sequeira

Summer Lovin'

Pulled Pork with Mango BBQ Sauce

Apple-Lime-Peanut Slaw

Come 'ere Puddin' Pie - Chocolate-Ginger Pudding Pie

Show Three gets off to a better start than last week's. Aarti says she met her husband when they were only 18 and they’ve been together ever since. Oh, wait, this may be no better. Aarti calls her menu “Summer lovin”, but, frankly, it sounds more like a barbecue to me.

Plus the names of her dishes are annoying and inane. (Sorry.)

Aarti starts with pulled pork sandwiches with a mango barbecue sauce, which I LOVE. She sweats onions, jalapeño and ginger together. She says she’s adding Indian flavor to a familiar recipe by adding fennel and cumin seeds. She’s playing off the pani puri spice mix which she says also has mustard seed and fenugreek. (Actually there are as many different spice blends for pani puri as there are cooks. Puri is the heavenly deep fried dough that’s stuffed with pani (water) mixed with all kinds of goodies.)

Aarti starts her mango barbecue sauce.

I love this recipe for mango barbecue sauce. It calls for regular barbecue sauce in the mixture. I use my own. The coconut curry sauce that you stir into the rice is also to die for.

Aarti’s recipe has mango purée, which probably has sugar in it. I prefer to add that myself. I usually use fresh mango, but I can see that the purée is a good substitute for the usual ketchup in a barbecue sauce. Aarti says to use cooked down mango juice if you can’t find the purée. Fresh mango, hello? She adds lime juice and apple cider vinegar with molasses and Worcestershire sauce. That simmers for 5 minutes.

Aarti uses pork shoulder which she says is also called Boston butt. Ew. For her rub (you can add the rub to the meat the night before), she mixes together brown sugar, paprika and…nothing else. Brown sugar and paprika. Okay. That’s fine. She rubs it into her pork. She adds it to the sauce and cooks it for hours, turning it every half hour. It looks amazing.

“Come here, puddin’ pie.” At least, I think she said that. I may have dreamed it in a haze of poor recipe titles.

Aarti starts the crust with chocolate wafers - 15 of them - and 15 ginger snaps. I love that combination. I’ve used ginger snaps in place of or in addition to graham crackers, but THIS takes it to a new level. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before and it’s so obvious a combo. Sorry, Em, if you do that all the time. She adds ¾ stick of a butter.

Aarti uses most of the crumbs to line a Pyrex pie dish, saving a few for garnish. I’ve never done that before either. I like that idea. She bakes the crust for 10 minutes in a 350°F oven.

She separates 3 eggs, cracking them on the counter. NO! And what’s happening to the whites? She adds the yolks to a saucepan.

Aarti adds 2 cups of milk, a “touch” of vanilla (not before she’s cooking the mixture, I hope). DON’T ever do that. Cooking the vanilla extract boils off the alcohol and the flavor. You spent a lot for your vanilla, don’t dissipate the taste before you’ve even finished the recipe.

Aarti adds ½ cup sugar and ¼ cup of cornstarch to eggs and milk and whisks it all together. This is a very strange way she’s going about this recipe. How about making a slurry? You mix the cornstarch with a bit of the liquid so you don’t have lumps. And listen to this, she just throws in the chocolate in big pieces. I have NEVER seen such a haphazard method.

What would I do? There are two ways to proceed. The first is to put the cornstarch and sugar in the bottom of the saucepan. Whisk together the eggs and milk and slowly whisk that into the dry ingredients, so lumps don’t form. OR you could whisk together the milk, sugar and eggs in the saucepan and then make a slurry with the cornstarch and some of the milk. Stir that in.

Cook, stirring all the time, until the mixture just begins to thicken. The foam will start to disappear and the mixture will coat the back of the spoon. Simmer it for one minute, no longer, stirring all the time, getting the inside edges of the saucepan with your wooden spoon or plastic spatula. (Cornstarch lesson - never boil longer than one minute or the cornstarch won’t thicken the pudding. It will thin it out.)

One second before the pot leaves the burner, stir in the FINELY CHOPPED CHOCOLATE (you want it to melt in a hurry) and take it off the stove. Stir (not for very long) until the mixture is smooth. Let cool for a minute. Stir in the vanilla.

We go to a commercial with Aarti saying to stir the pudding over heat and don’t leave it alone for minute. I should say not!

We come back to Aarti chopping her crystallized ginger. But she’s walked away form the pudding. Oh, I guess it’s done. She adds the crystallized ginger to the chocolate pudding, which looks absolutely luscious despite her rather slipshod method.

Aarti pours the pudding mixture into that wonderful crust. She gives us another “Wrap your arms around you” expression that she was so fond of last week. She says to refrigerate the pie for 3 hours with plastic wrap right on the top so no skin forms.

She says this will be so cool and refreshing after their pulled pork sandwiches. Really? It sure looks good, but chocolate pudding in a pie isn’t usually where I turn to be refreshed.

For cole slaw, Aarti chops green cabbage into shreds and cuts a Granny Smith apples into matchsticks. She’s doing everything by hand. I like that. Into a separate bowl, she squeezes limes and adds a little honey (from a bear, ick) and ground cumin, garam masala, salt and pepper. She also adds a big pinch of salt to the bowl of cabbage to help it break down.

To finish the dressing, Aarti adds oil to the lime juice. She says she uses 1 part acid to 2 parts oil. (That’s quite zesty. The classic is 3 to 1.) She dresses the cole slaw and lets it sit.

Aarti takes a look at the pork which has been cooking for 3 hours. The bright orange of the mango barbecue sauce has turned dark brown. She says she’s been degreasing it over the past 3 hours. She removes the pork and shreds the pork with two forks.

She whips some cream and puts it aside. She takes buns out of the oven and adds some shredded pork to one with a little bread and butter pickle. I hate those - I’m a new kosher dill pickle gal. She sprinkles toasted peanuts of the slaw. She tastes the pork and the slaw. No sign of hubby. Eh, who needs him anyway?

And just like last week, Aarti doesn’t wait for him to cut a full sized piece of pie. She says it’s just a “sampling” piece. Really? Where’s your accountability group when you need them?

Aarti sprinkles a little bit of the saved crumbs over the whipped cream which garnishes the pie. I really like that idea. Aarti doesn’t seem to mind that Brendan isn’t there. Her “Summer Lovin’” meal looks a little lonely to me.

This shtick of her cooking for different folks and having them not show up is really weird. It’s strange to have her cook for special people and then she chows down before they arrive. Besides, Aarti doesn’t need strange trysts with invisible people or all these cutesy named recipes. Just cook, girl, and leave the artifice at the door.

Aarti Party - Part One Of A Double Dose

Aarti Party with Aarti Sequeira

What Storms May Come

I Ain't Chicken Chicken: Crispy Roasted Chicken Breasts with Orange and Cardamom

The Ugly Duckling Salad

Huggy Buggy Bread Pudding

I decided to do a twofer and watch the second and third of Aarti’s shows together. I got off to a bad start, though.

In Episode 2, Aarti talks about how good food can change the mood of a bad day and how her accountability group is coming over?

What’s an accountability group? And why is she feeding them dinner? Is she doing her taxes? Is it an AA thing? Isn’t that supposed to be anonymous? Is she just using that word to mean people to whom she accountable? That sounds really strange.

So what does that MEAN? I’m annoyed now. And, sorry, I can’t puzzle over this all day. I have to go and get ready for my responsibility-monitoring colleagues to come over. (Just kidding. NO ONE monitors me…as you probably don’t need to be told.) I have to get over this. Maybe it will become clearer by the end what the heck she’s talking about.

Aarti is starting with her “Huggie Buggie Bread Pudding”. OMG. What an awful name. She’s not serving children in a hospital wing! Wait, maybe she is. Could THAT be what an accountability group is? Nah, that’s kind of far-fetched.

I’m getting really worked up NOW. The tv guide thingie said she was making an ugly duckling salad and I was sooo excited to see that, because I LOVE duck salad. It turns out she’s making some celery root salad or other and just CALLING it an Ugly Duckling salad. We’re not getting off to a good start.

She says AGAIN her accountability group is coming for dinner and that they have some “hard” stuff to talk through.

For the bread pudding, Aarti adds 3 eggs to a bowl. Oh no. There’s a lot to talk about here. She cracks the eggs on the counter and says not to crack them on the edge of the bowl or you risk getting some egg shell in there. But how about the egg goo on the counter? I would worry about that a lot more. (I know I got a C on that test, but I would never crack an egg on anything that didn’t go immediately into the dishwasher.)

She adds coconut milk to the eggs and says she often uses that in place of cream. Interesting. Aarti pours in 3 cups of whole milk. She tells us that she gave that name to the bread pudding because it makes her feel like she’s being hugged from the inside out. (That sounds slightly unappealing. It sort of makes me think of the digestive process.)

She also gave it that name because her husband is a “huggie buggie” and hugs everyone in sight. Um, marriages have ended on less than that.

Aarti adds in cinnamon, cardamom and ground ginger from her masala dabba with a cup of sugar and whisks it all together. She adds the bread, cut into quite big pieces, and presses it down to get moistened by the milk and egg mixture. (If using fresh bread, she says, toast it in the oven first).

Next to go in are dried figs, which have been soaked in hot water. She says to use raisins or dried apricots or cherries, if you prefer. I like that Aarti gives us an alternative, if you don’t love figs. (I like them fresh, not dried. And whatever I use, I would soak them in brandy instead of water).

Aarti pours the mixture into a buttered baking dish. She adds some roasted cashews over the top and she bakes it at 350°F oven for 35 minutes.

Accountability Group mention number 300. Ugh!

Aarti mixes potatoes with thyme. She says that in India not a lot of people have ovens, so having a roasted meal is a luxury. Aarti says growing up in Dubai they had an oven, but she still feels roasting is special.

I can’t tell if those potatoes are already cooked. No, I don’t think so. She adds salt, olive oil and thyme and puts them in a 500°F oven for…??? She never tells us.

She moves on to I Ain’t Chicken Chicken. (I am so not in love with her recipe names.) She says “back in the day” she would never make anything unless she followed a recipe exactly. This was the first recipe she strayed from. I still don’t get the name.

Aarti mixes half a stick of butter with cardamom, orange zest and fresh ginger, which she grates on her microplaner. That’s an excellent idea.

Aarti says to peel the ginger, grate it, form it into a cylinder and freeze it. That’s okay, but you’re losing a lot of flavor from freezing it already grated. I just wrap it really well in plastic wrap, freeze it and hack off a chunk when I need it. I use a teaspoon to peel it and then I chop it.

Aarti says she’s using chicken breasts on the bone, because they’re going into such a hot oven they can withstand the heat and they stay moister on the bone.

Kitchen hygiene alert. The package of chicken, wrapped in paper, was placed right on the kitchen counter. Paper isn’t plastic. Cooties can still get on the counter.

Oh my, things get a bit steamy. “You’ve got to get intimate with your chicken,” Aarti tells us as she rubs flavored butter under the skin. She washes her hands well. She adds olive oil and salt to the top of the chicken and cooks it for 30 minutes in the same hot over as the potatoes. Aarti says to cook it until it registers 160°F on a thermometer or until the juices run clear.

She starts her poorly named salad, which does sound good. Oh gosh, AGAIN she says her WEEKLY accountability group buddies are coming over for their WEEKLY (let me say that again) session on how to achieve their dreams. I’m sorry, but ick! Maybe I SHOULD just let this go, though, since in Aarti’s case, it obviously worked.

Aarti toasts pistachios and chops garlic (no removing the center stalk). She squeezes lemon juice into the blender. She adds a little sriracha (did you see this?) salt and pepper, hot water, nuts and canola (ugh) oil. I do like that Aarti’s using a blender, which I always do for dressings.

She assembles the salad – spinach leaves and celery root, which is the ugly duckling...dumb. Aarti breaks down the celery root by cutting off both ends and peeling it with a big knife. She’s grating it by hand (why?). She mixes together spinach, apple and the celery root. She thinks the dressing is a bit thick, so she adds a little water. I might have added some apple juice or OJ.

It’s good that Aarti roasted the chicken in a really hot oven, but the name makes no sense. Also, she takes the chicken off the bone. WHY? I admit it does look attractive sliced slightly on the diagonal, but she’s leaving so much behind.

Aarti wipes the cutting board off with a dish towel and sets the towel to one side. Big ew. She places a dinner plate on the counter. (Oh good, chicken germs can be carried right to the table and onto the hands of whomever handles the plate.)

But this next part is strange. Aarti says, “Look at this nice bright plate. Isn’t it comforting?” Really, I’m not trying to be such a stickler, I’m just reporting on what’s actually going on and that sentence makes less than no sense. A plate (albeit a perfectly attractive white plate with a red patterned rim) is NOT comforting. It wasn’t even PARTICULARLY bright. Oy!

Aarti adds the potatoes to the noteworthy plate. Boy, those are just a teensy degree from being burned. Also I need a little sauce, just a little something. Even a dab of her pistachio salad dressing would be good to dip the chicken into.

Aarti serves herself a plate and says, “I have to taste it and make sure I’m serving my friends some good food.” That’s a bit odd, but I guess we’re supposed to see her tasting it. She says (for the second time) that the ground pistachios remind her of the flavor of tahini. Interesting.

Aarti even digs into the bread pudding. It looks good, but it also looks in need of a bit of saucing. Oh, she’s adding vanilla ice cream.

So where is this group we keep hearing about? I guess a first season Food Network Star doesn’t warrant group scenes. We never see hide nor hair of them, but Aarti has eaten quite a bit of the food in advance of their arrival. She should really talk to someone about that.

Aarti Is Lovely, Her Food Is Flavorful, But Let’s Have Just A Bit More Kitchen Hygiene And I Apologize In Advance For My Obsession With Madhur Jaffrey

Aarti Parti with Aarti Sequeira

My House

Sloppy Bombay Joes

Massaged Kale Salad

Creamy Pistachio Pops

Shouldn’t the name of the show it be Aarti’S party, instead of Aarti Party? Oh wait, I guess they’re doing a spin on Aarti’s delightful blog, Aarti Paarti and her You Tube videos.

The show opens with Aarti (I love her dress) sitting in what looks like a college dorm room. Aren’t those giant neon poppies on the wall from the flower power days of the 60’s? (The flowers on her bright yellow mug even match the wallpaper. That probably wasn’t necessary.)

Her recipes DO look interesting though.

Aarti starts with Indian Style Sloppy Joes. Her knife skills do NOT look up to scratch, but that could be because she doesn’t want to slice her finger off as she’s talking. Also, that’s a HUGE knife.

Oh my, the fake stairway in the background also has a coordinated version of the flowered wallpaper. I would rather have seen just a bit of some gorgeous Indian textiles. They wouldn’t have had to go overboard and be obvious, but Aarti IS showing us Indian-based recipes, so we could have done with a bit of beautiful bling from India.

Aarti chops her ginger and Serrano pepper with that overly large knife and it doesn’t look she she’s getting anything anywhere near fine enough.

Many of Madhur Jaffrey’s (my go-to authority for Indian food) recipes start by making a base of garlic, ginger and onions in the food processor! You want them superfine, because you don’t want to bite into a chunk of ginger or garlic. Also, curries don’t use thickeners like flour, so the puréed vegetables make a wonderful base to the dish and thicken the sauce.

Typically, Madhur will mince the garlic, ginger and onions in a food processor (or blender) using a few spoonfuls of water to loosen the mixture just a bit. That onion puree is sautéed in the pan after the meat is seared and the whole spices are cooked in oil for a sec. Then any liquid ingredients go in before the meat or poultry is returned to the pan and the whole thing is simmered for awhile.

Back to Aarti. She adds her garlic, ginger and Serrano chile pepper mixture to the pan. She says those three things make a triumvirate of Indian ingredients. I guess her onions go in later. I like them as a base to the whole operation.

Aarti tells us she’s using ground turkey. I really like that, because ground beef doesn’t exactly say India to me.

Aarti is excited to talk about spices. She displays them in a really attractive wooden spice holder, a Masala Dabba, which will be familiar to anyone from an Indian home. (Why couldn’t we have more of those touches?) She explains that garam masala is a mixture of many warm spices. I’m glad she does that. If we already know, we can feel superior and if we don’t, we’ve learned something.

She adds the garam masala to the pot.

Oy, I have another little “note” here. Madhur (don’t be annoyed at HER, she’s fantastic) normally adds garam masala at the end of cooking or sprinkles it on the finished dish. It’s interesting that Aarti adds it now.

Paprika goes in. I love that Aarti talks about “blooming” the spices. She says to cook them for 30 seconds only or they will burn. I always cook warm spices on low, low, low for 2 to 3 minutes to get their full benefit, while whole spices go into the hot oil for seconds (according to Madhur). Aarti adds water and tomatoes and cooks the Sloppy Joe mixture for 15 minutes, uncovered.

Aarti is making kulfi which I LOVE. Oh good! She is going to use both evaporated milk and sweetened condensed milk.

She pours the evaporated milk into a pot and adds the leaves from a few Earl Grey tea bags and ground cardamom “because it’s easier”. I do not agree with THAT at all.

There are beautiful whole cardamom pods in her Masala Dabba. She should use them. Plus she has to strain the tea leaves out anyway, so why not use the whole cardamom pod? BTW, if you don’t like Earl Grey tea, just skip it and add 8 to 10 whole cardamom pods.

Aarti brings the evaporated milk mixture to a simmer and then turns off the heat to steep all the ingredients for 30 minutes. It’s interesting that Aarti calls the recipe Kulfi, while the website calls it Creamy Pistachio Pops. I really think we could handle the Indian name.

Aarti finishes up the Sloppy Joes. She adds oil to a pan and then pistachios and raisins. She wants to toast the nuts and plump the raisins. I have NEVER plumped raisins in oil. That’s kind of neat.

She removes the nuts and raisins, adds more oil to the pan and then throws in some cumin seeds. Oh, I DO love roasted or, in this case TOASTED, cumin seeds. Aarti adds chopped red pepper and onions and cooks them until slightly brown.

Back to the Kulfi, Aarti strains the mixture. Definitely, whole cardamom seeds could have been used. She stirs in chopped pistachios, a can of sweetened condensed milk and a cup of heavy cream. She pours the mixture into popsicle molds and puts them into the freezer.

For the Sloppy Joe filling, Aarti takes ground turkey out of the fridge and puts the package down on her big wooden cutting board. Not a good idea.

Next she uses that huge chef’s knife to open the package of ground turkey and puts the knife down on the cutting board. Also not a good idea.

THEN she lays the ground turkey package on the counter, next to the stove top and adds the turkey to the pan. She has now polluted TWO surfaces AND her knife.

I store meat and turkey in the plastic bag from the supermarket. When I’m ready to use it, I lay the package of meat on top of that plastic bag as I’m opening it. (Whatever knife I use to open the package goes immediately into the sink.) After I’ve added my meat or poultry to the pot, pan or bowl, I throw out all the packaging at once and wash my hands before going on to the next thing. That’s obvious, right?

Aarti seasons her onion and red pepper mixture and adds in the ground turkey.

Back from a commercial, we come back to Aarti showing us a bunch of kale on the cutting board. She shows us how to strip the leaves off the stem. Then she rolls up the kale and cuts it into ribbons.

I sure hope that knife was washed before cutting the kale and the cutting board was dealt with, but we don’t see that, so we don’t know for sure.

It would have been so easy to have a separate cutting board on top of the big one and deal with the turkey on that. The bottom of the turkey package is not reliably turkey-juice free.

Aarti adds her ribbons of kale to a big bowl. She rubs a lemon on the board (let’s hope it really is turkey free) and squeezes half of it into the kale and adds some olive oil and salt.

She starts ‘massaging” the kale to break down the fibers. Aarti says to do that for 2 minutes and it will start smelling like bananas. I’d like to try it just to see if that’s true.

Aarti washes her hands and chops a perfect looking mango, telling us in India it’s known as the food of the gods. She adds the mango to the kale with some toasted pumpkin seeds.

She whisks together a dressing from the rest of the lemon, a little honey (from a bear, ugh) and olive oil and tests it on a little piece of mango. Aarti says because the kale is so hearty you can leave it dressed in the fridge for days and it only gets better.

She adds the sauce to the ground turkey.

Aarti toasts the buns for the Sloppy Joes and adds half and half to the turkey mixture with honey and the raisins and pistachios. She puts one together with some salad on the plate. She tastes the salad. Yum.

Oh, that nice dress is actually a top.

Aarti gets the pops from the freezer and dunks them in hot water. She says not to worry about using popsicle molds, just use tea cups. That’s actually a better idea, because these popsicles are so HUGE. She sprinkles on some chopped pistachio nuts. Lovely looking.

It’s hard to believe that Aarti is already so polished. They did a great job of putting this show together. Aarti is charming and she was obviously told to laugh and smile freely. I like her. I like the recipes. I could do with fewer flowers on the walls and less cross-contamination, but this first episode of Aarti Party was a solid 7.999 out of ten. They definitely made the right choice.