Rachael puts another pot on

Nobody worth his salt at the TV critics’ tour went away from a weekend session with Rachael Ray with an empty stomach or a blank notebook.

Ray, the homey cook and Food Network personality, author of 14 cookbooks and now host of her own syndicated TV talk show, airing in September on KMBC-9, is this year’s antidote to Martha Stewart, whose disastrous TV season (a talk show and “Apprentice” spin-off down in the flames) effectively laid to rest the dubious notion that a fussy, formal household diva could reinvent herself.

While Stewart strained to be down-to-earth, Ray was probably dropping food on the floor. It happens, a lot, during tapings of her cable shows. While meeting with TV critics Sunday, she confessed that she once accidentally set her hair on fire.

Even her storied “30-Minute Meals,” she said, “if I open the wine before I start cooking, it takes me a good 47.”

That, she believes, will be what makes her show what “Martha” was not: a success.

“There’s nothing serious going on and nothing too heavy,” she said. Admitting that “I don’t like a lot of experts,” Ray will rely heavily on family and friends to make her show “a very relaxed environment.”

But not too relaxed: Ray will keep producing new episodes of “30-Minute Meals,” cramming dozens of shows into marathon taping sessions and shooting travel segments for the talk show while churning out more of her “Tasty Travels.”

Afterward, Ray treated the group to her famous mini-burgers and fries. Food, it is true, is one way to a critic’s heart. Cholesterol is another.

Also overheard in Pasadena:

•“ ‘CSI’ has always been underestimated from Day 1 by everyone but the fans. Our network has underestimated us. The critics have underestimated us. But the fans have not.” — Marg Helgenberger

•“We haven’t tried to sugarcoat the notion that they are criminals and that they do things that would probably not make many of us happy that they’re wandering around in society.” — Producer John Wells on his dark action drama “Smith” coming this fall to CBS; in the pilot, a psycho played by Simon Baker (“The Guardian”) shoots two men while whistling.

•“We have to go back 20, 25 years to remember a significant piece of television about something as timely and important as nuclear weapons. And if it’s that long, if we have to go back to ‘The Day After,’ then I think it’s time to look at it again.” — Producer Jon Turtletaub on “Jericho,” which like the 1983 movie “The Day After” is set in Kansas.

“The average age of the viewers is too old, and if we keep going that way, in 10 years they will all be gone.” — CBS Corp. chairman Leslie Moonves, explaining why he wooed Katie Couric to take over the “Evening News.”