‘Shambolic’ Nigella wouldn’t suit Bake Off
SHE has conjured up countless mouth-watering recipes from her designer TV kitchen for years.
Surrounded by the latest culinary gadgets and gizmos, you would think Nigella Lawson would feel at home in the ideal cooking environment.
However, the celebrity chef has admitted she prefers her kitchen to be ‘slightly shambolic’ – as she hit out at the Great British Bake Off’s quest for perfection.
The 58-year-old criticised the hit Channel 4 show for being ‘more about the craft’.
‘I certainly think when people say, “you have got to make 26 biscuits and they have all got to be identical” when I make 12 they don’t look identical,’ she said. ‘For me there is more joy in abundance than in precision.
‘Decisions make me more stressed than actions.’
She said that worrying too much about impressing dinner-party guests can add a stress to the evening, and that it doesn’t matter how quickly or neatly you chop.
‘Perfection makes you automatically tense and the whole thing becomes a test,’ she told an audience in London. ‘One’s job to have people over, is to make them feel at ease,’ the brunette insisted. ‘That is more important than making everyone clap when they see a starter.’
The self-proclaimed home cook even admitted she was ‘embarrassed’ by her own cooking style.
‘Most people who chop vegetables on television do it very fast and very neatly,’ she said. ‘I am clonking away and I am very slow.
‘But I don’t think you have to chop carrots very fast to make a stew or in order to eat something.’