Is your kitchen slightly defective? Not enough storage jars? Low stocks of chocolate morsels? You might be tempted to look to Nigella for inspiration. This, she would have you believe, is a mistake. On the cover of her new book Kitchen: Recipes From the Heart of the Home (£26, Chatto & Windus), she wears an apron, lest the famously creamy décolletage be spattered. It could happen: life is a whirl of after-work urgency and feeding friends when frantic. But no matter how many times she professes to be an anti-perfectionist, it's hard to believe.

She opens her mouth to tell us that things go wrong for her, too: we hear the slow, silky flow of molten chocolate. She tells us that she forgot to put the vegetables in her Thai chicken noodle soup; we assume she was distracted by plucking a single perfect rose from an Eaton Square windowbox. From the scarlet negligee she poses in with a bowl of "slut's spaghetti" to the title of How to Be a Domestic Goddess, she's always had her tongue thrust so far into her cheek that there's no room for chocolate lime cake. She's entirely in control of her own image, and she looks, sounds and cooks too smooth. We're not buying it.

What we will be buying is Kitchen. At 500 pages, it's the same length as her first, now-classic book How To Eat, signalling a return to form after the flimsiness of Nigella Express. The recipes are reassuringly solid, enticing and, crucially, just that bit less excessive; the sugar count, though still no diabetic's delight, is down significantly. This aside, she has refused to evolve with fashion, and, in keeping her cooking much the same, has acquired a rebellious appeal. The rest of the civilised culinary world is desperately trying to tread lightly on the earth while smoking its own kippers. Nigella goes shopping in a cab and rips the cellophane off packets of stir-fry veg and ready-made gnocchi. Her only flaw is an urge to make life easier. Perfect.