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"What do you do when you miss the flavors you grew up with but don&amp;#039;t know how to recreate them at home? What do you do if you want to share them with others? Aarti Sequeira&amp;#039;s path might be a little unorthodox, but it seems to be working so far.  Sequeira is the winner of the sixth Next Food Network Star and her show, Aarti Party, debuted Sunday on the Food Network. Her new program is, arguably, getting a little more attention than anyone might have expected. In addition to the usual on-line buzz Food Network fans might be used to, stories about her success are showing up on NPR and ABC. Why? The food-blogger-turned-television cook is bringing a little more to the table than other FN hosts.   Born in India but raised in Dubai, a mosaic of cultures on the shores of the Persian Gulf, Sequeira&amp;#039;s show focuses on blending the flavors of her upbringing with the standard dishes of her adopted American home. And like a lot of Americans, Sequeira is a relative newcomer to the kitchen, having only begun cooking seven years ago. While she grew up eating Indian food cooked by her mother \u2013 whom she credits for much of her own interest in food \u2013 her first forays into the kitchen weren&amp;#039;t to prepare Indian classics like butter chicken or aloo chaas but steak and lasagna, she said. Her guide along the way? The Joy of Cooking.  &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s so great to have as a reference book,&amp;quot; she said last week from New York. &amp;quot;How do I make steak? That page, more than any other, is stained and dog eared.&amp;quot; Even though she was homesick for the flavors of her childhood, she said, cooking Indian food was harder than she thought it would be. Long lists of ingredients and seemingly complicated cooking techniques made Indian cuisine intimidating. Enrolling in a cooking program helped change that: not only did end up with a certificate in culinary arts but she found herself freed her from many of her inhibitions about cooking. But there was more to do. &amp;quot;I still venerated the recipe and was still really tied to the recipe,&amp;quot; said the Los Angeles resident, although she&amp;#039;s quick to defend recipes as the foundation for learning. It took another class to really help her cut the apron strings: a comedy improv class. &amp;quot;I was living in this really fearful place and I needed to live freely,&amp;quot; Sequeira said. Learning improv at the Hot House, a small comedy club in West Hollywood, taught her a couple of important things: &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t focus on yourself, focus on making others look good&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;make a strong decision and stick to it.&amp;quot; That, in particular, was a powerful lesson. With Indian cooking, you might throw everything but the kitchen sink into a dish and come up with something that tasted good, she said, but was also a little murky. Through improv, she learned to focus on the core ingredients, the ingredients that gave a dish its distinctive flavors. But that application to food wasn&amp;#039;t quite so clear until a friend said to her, &amp;quot;I hope this helps you start improvising in the kitchen.&amp;quot; That was another breakthrough moment, she said. Emboldened by that wish and everything she had learned at the Hot House, she devised the first recipe she could actually call her own: I Ain&amp;#039;t Chicken Chicken, and it appeared \u2013 as a celebration of newfound self-confidence \u2013 on her first cooking blog, Aartilla the Fun. Now, Sequeira finds herself at yet another crossroad. Winning a show on the Food Network is one thing, but she&amp;#039;s already thinking ahead to what she might be doing 10 years from now. She wants to continue making cooking shows, she said but she wants, too, to begin taking people to India. She wants to use cooking as a way to explore other aspects of culture such as music and art.  &amp;quot;But I really want to take food outside just the food world,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s how you really connect with someone.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.delish.com/food/news/a38265/for-aarti-food-connects-people/>