Smith: Domenica Catelli describes terror in Guy Fieri’s aisles

Caught Domenica Catelli on TV?

The Food Network’s current broadcast cycle features the episode of Guy Fieri’s “Grocery Games” that Domenica aced. The co-owner of Geyserville’s landmark Catelli’s restaurant was brilliant in the challenges that forced her and three competing restaurateurs to think, shop and cook fast inside Guy’s TV supermarket in Santa Rosa.

Truly, Catelli swears, it was one of most pressurized and demanding things she’d ever done. In the last game, seconds ticked away as she and fellow finalist John Atkinson, whose North End Caffe in Manhattan Beach appeared earlier on Guy’s “Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives,” raced to select ingredients and then whip up a meal that had to include Jiffy Pop.

As time for shopping ran out and time for cooking began, Guy made the two contestants swap all their ingredients.

Catelli was ruled the winner; then she won $20,000 in the bonus grocery hunt. She knew instantly what she’d do with the money: She’ll take her dad, previous Catelli’s The Rex proprietor Richard Catelli, and her daughter, new high-school graduate Chiara, to Italy.

There was another benefit of appearing on the show: She at last met Duskie Estes of Sebastopol’s Zazu Kitchen & Farm, who acted as judge.

The grocery game has Catelli thinking about how many people become overwhelmed at the supermarket and fall back on the same items: the chicken, the milk, the lettuce, the eggs.

The author, teacher and chef suggests that each shopping trip, people stuck in a home-cooking rut choose one item they’ve never used before. “Use an ingredient you may be a little afraid of,” she said.

She advises starting with fresh herbs: Pick up a bit of tarragon and, right then and there, Google the herb to catch a few ideas for what to do with it. Our culinary game-show star promises it will delight folks tired of chicken to finish off the cooking with fresh lime and cilantro, or perhaps lemon and thyme.

THE HEAT WAS ON also for Deb Morris when something went wrong as she attempted to deliver a masterpiece of a wedding cake created by her and sister Condra Easley’s Patisserie Angelica in Sebastopol.

Morris was driving up hilly Shiloh Ridge, east of Windsor, when the van broke down.

A bride and groom were waiting. Morris breathed deeply as a fellow pulled up and asked if she could use a hand.

The stranger then took Morris and the cake there. Then he carried the cake in. Then he insisted that Morris borrow his second car to make a second delivery and get herself back to Sebastopol. Then he refused any remuneration.

The bakery sisters know only that his name is Will, and that he takes the cake.

NOT POISON, BUT STILL: Lab tests at UC Davis found no rat poison or other toxins in the eight meatballs that frightened dog owners at Santa Rosa’s A Place to Play park.

The raw meatballs were found in and near the park’s leash-optional dog run on Sept. 19. Naturally, the discovery raised fears somebody was copying the crimes of those responsible for setting out strychnine-laced or suspicious meatballs in San Francisco.

Thank goodness the meatballs dropped at the Santa Rosa park weren’t poisonous, but what an un-doglike thing to do.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.