END WITH A FOODGASM!

She is clear and articulate and this is where her Oxford education and her background as deputy literary editor of the Times way back when she was in her 20s, really manifests itself. “She is the perfect combination of good food and the right lineage,” said the retired newspaper baron Aveek Sarkar at dinner. Clearly a fan, he asked her several questions including one on cooking equipment!

The piece de resistance of both meals was the dessert. Her salted chocolate tart and summer pavlova drooling with freshlysqueezed passion fruit floored the audience.

At The Roseate in Delhi, the invitee-only American Expressevolve lunch and ticketed dinner at Chi-ni with its open kitchen and battalion of chefs, won over the discerning Delhi palate. Nigella talked frankly and openly about her mother using her children as “child labour” to help her in the kitchen and said that her mother was an impatient cook who resented cooking, but was still a good cook and probably her first inspiration.

Answering questions on health, she said frankly, “butter and ghee were once considered bad for you.

Now doctors are saying the opposite. I say eat everything in moderation.” When someone asked her what her guilty pleasure was, Nigella replied that she never felt guilty about eating anything. “If you find something pleasurable and it gives you joy, then you must not feel guilty.”

Although it is reported that Nigella had 94 per cent male audiences when she first started TV, her Delhi admirers were mainly women. Young women who wanted to be like her, the selfie women’s brigade, and an older woman who said, “it was a dream come true” to meet her. Nigella gave that lady a huge hug and a kiss.

“I SIMPLY DON’T HAVE THE SKILLS OF A TRAINED CHEF. IN FACT, I’M QUITE CLUMSY IN THE KITCHEN.”

Nigella tirelessly hugged, advised and posed her way through three days over four events, book signings and dashes to the kitchen. She made time for young kitchen staff at both the

Taj and The Roseate, giving them more of those precious hugs and smiles, and thanks at the end of all meals. Her dresses moved from red and flowy to figure hugging bright coloured prints, which showed off her assets without indiscretion. To say she was exhausted after the whirlwind culinary escapade would be an understatement. I know I was. And she did it all in high heels and make-up. I don’t see many men pulling that road show off !

But that’s Nigella.