A veteran of video production, the Rev. Leo Patalinghug hates having to film a second take. So as he was preparing his recipe for fajitas before the Food Network cameras, he was so focused on getting the shot right the first time that he didn't see the man standing, arms crossed, directly in front of him.

It took a producer to point out the surprise guest: celebrity chef Bobby Flay, who had come to Mount St. Mary's University to challenge the priest to a cook-off.

Patalinghug, the director of pastoral field education at Mount St. Mary's Seminary, had been lured in front of the cameras for a supposed feature on his ministry. When he recovered from his shock, he looked directly into the cameras and adopted a tone of mock outrage: "Food Network, you lied to a priest!"

Deception or no, the resulting episode of "Throwdown With Bobby Flay," set to air Sept. 9, provides the grandest platform yet for Grace Before Meals, the ministry Patalinghug created six years ago to encourage people to cook, eat and talk with each other.

"Food isn't the end; it's really a means," says the 39-year-old Patalinghug, who learned to cook growing up in his mother's kitchen in South Baltimore. "It brings family and friends together around a dinner table. And in that, you find faith."

It's a message - Patalinghug calls it a movement - that the priest has spread in presentations throughout the country, and as far away as Italy, Australia and Japan. Gracebeforemeals.com, on which he posts recipes and professionally produced webisodes, gets 10,000 hits daily; he is talking with PBS about airing a series. His self-published cookbook, "Grace Before Meals: Recipes for Family Life," has entered its second printing, and he is in talks with Random House to produce the third.

All of it, he says, is an extension of his work as a priest.

The Catholic Mass is centered around the Eucharist, a re-enactment of the Last Supper in which believers are nourished by the body and blood of Christ. The Gospels tell of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding feast, and of feeding the multitudes who followed him.

"I'm inviting people to the table," Patalinghug says. "I'm doing what Jesus did. Before he started teaching theologically, he fed them loaves and fishes. I don't want to separate people and only address their spirit." But it's their spirit that's Patalinghug's ultimate goal, which is why his recipes tend to be leavened by little homilies. The cookbook, for example, is organized into 24 feast day celebrations - "two a month, no big deal," is how he describes it - each introduced by an inspirational essay, and including bible verses for study and questions for discussion.

"People aren't going to read a long theological essay," he says. "But surely they can look at a five-minute passage while the water is boiling."

The ministry caught the attention of the Food Network, which contacted Patalinghug earlier this year about producing a segment for an unnamed program. The ploy is, in fact, the way Flay sets up opponents for his show. When the potential adversary least expects it, the celebrity chef shows up and challenges him to a throwdown - a cook-off - on that person's specialty. A panel of judges tastes the results and declares a winner.

Because Flay's victims tend to be restaurateurs or professional chefs, it didn't occur to Patalinghug that he might be a candidate for "Throwdown." But as preparations for the segment progressed, he did wonder why producers seemed to be making such a fuss. They asked him to set up a typical Grace Before Meals event, to plan to do some grilling, and to set aside two days for filming.

Patalinghug invited friends and colleagues to the June shoot in the backyard of Mount St. Mary's University President Thomas Powell.

Theresa Greene was on set on the second day when Flay showed up. She recognized him as he made his way through the crowd toward Patalinghug.

"Father Leo didn't even know that he was standing right in front of him," remembers Greene, a parishioner at St. John Church in Westminster, where Patalinghug served before his assignment at the seminary. "He said, 'I hear you're pretty good at these fajitas.' And I thought, 'Oh man, you're in so much trouble, Father Leo.'"

She might as well have been reading Patalinghug's mind.

"It was a little difficult for me to get my mind around everything," he says. "At one point, I asked him, 'Really, honestly, what are you doing here? Because I'm not famous for anything. And he said something like, 'Well, you kind of are now.'

"By that point, my hands were shaking. And I had to cut onions."

He recovered enough to prepare what he calls "fusion fajitas."

"A fajita is basically just the Latin American version of an Asian's egg roll or a Greek's gyro or a Turkish shawarma," he says. "What I tried to do with this to make it special was bring in different cultural flavors into one. Which is kind of my style of cooking anyway."

Patalinghug traces his interest in food to his Filipino heritage, but says he was exposed from childhood to a broader cuisine. For the fajitas, he says, the ingredients ranged "from ginger to soy to something sweet to some texture with vegetables, some wine, even household items like ketchup. I think there might be 13 ingredients in this marinade."

He has agreed not to divulge who won "Throwdown" - typically, it's Flay's opponent - but he's willing to describe his own work.

"There was definitely an element of Filipino there," he says. "This fusion fajita takes on a little bit of the sweet tanginess of Asia, there's some robustness, there's a mellowness from France, there's a creamy component, there's a spice from Southwest flavors.

"It was very fun. It was smooth, and at least I can say the camera crew liked the food a lot."

Watch it: The episode of "Throwdown With Bobby Flay" featuring the Rev. Leo Patalinghug airs at 9 p.m. Wednesday on the Food Network. Patalinghug is planning to host a party to watch the program in the parking lot of Da Mimmo Italian Restaurant at 217 S. High St. in Little Italy.