As Britain’s foremost domestic goddess, she is renowned for making stressful dinner parties seem like a piece of cake – all while looking immaculate, of course.
But Nigella Lawson has faced a roasting from fans after claiming that her latest recipe – a simple dish of cherry tomatoes and salad cream – was a "game-changer".
The TV cook, 59, showed off an image of the vibrantly coloured "Jackson Pollock" dish on her Instagram account on Tuesday.
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A post shared by Nigella(@nigellalawson) on Jul 15, 2019 at 2:09am PDT
The bowl of halved tomatoes was drizzled with salad cream and finished with a sprinkling of chives.
Lawson wrote: "This tomato salad is all you need for a summer starter. What I do is sit the tomatoes in the sun, uncut: It takes any chill off them and makes them taste somehow more tomatoey.
"Any leftover salad cream can be stored in the fridge in an old jam jar."
Some of her followers pointed out that the dish wasn’t exactly the most complicated in her repertoire – although it did include making salad cream from scratch.
Lawson wrote: "Recipe of the day is this old-fashioned tomato salad, and by old-fashioned, I mean with a real, homemade salad cream.
"If you’ve only ever known salad cream out of a bottle, this is a gentle game-changer."
However, one Instagram user wrote: "Oh dear... looks like something home cooks submit to Gordon Ramsay on Twitter" – a reference to the Michelin-starred chef who rates dishes by amateur cooks on social media.
Another noted sarcastically that the recipe was "groundbreaking".
Undeterred, Lawson later posted an image of an equally uncomplicated chicken, parsley and toasted almond salad.
She admitted: "Less a recipe, maybe, and more a just-throw-it-together idea, but it’s very fine."
Nigella's French toast recipe also came under fire. Picture: Instagram
It is not the first time she has faced ridicule. Her French toast on BBC2 show At My Table came under fire in 2017, while she cooked tomatoes on toast in another episode.
Lawson was also previously criticised for using double cream in her carbonara recipe – branded the "death" of Italian food by some aficionados.
The sauce is traditionally made using egg yolk, pancetta and parmesan cheese.
The "game-changer" tag is not uncommon in Lawson’s lexicon. In February she bestowed the same honour on her "fiery and jubilant" squid spaghetti.