It's cheating, I suppose, because her cooking show is currently on Bravo...
but Padman Lakshmi used to have a Food Network series (Padma's Passport). Plus she's just amazing to look at. She's welcome at any of my tailgates.
The weirdest factoid about her is that she was once married to Salman Rushdie, one of my favorite novelists--and that just makes him a bigger hero to me...