As part of NBC’s recent tradition of turning quality concepts into can’t-miss ratings bonanzas (e.g. Knight Rider, Crusoe, the Rosie O’Donnell variety special), the network is cooking up a sitcom around comely Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi. The project is still early in preproduction, but the concept, unsurprisingly, revolves around a woman’s fictional misadventures in the culinary world. Variety notes that other such ventures, like the sitcoms based around Kitchen Confidential and Emiril, have not been terribly successful, and Lakshmi’s previous acting credits (including the TV movie The Ten Commandments and as a singer named Sylk in Glitter) are spotty to say the least. But if she can sink her teeth into this role with merely a fraction of the vigor with which she sunk her teeth into a Carl’s Jr. Western Bacon Thickburger, who knows?