LONDON, Dec. 28 (UPI) -- British TV chef Nigella Lawson said she is "conflict-averse," shortly before she testified in a fraud trial against two of her former assistants.
Lawson made the comment during an interview with Radio Times, six weeks before the upcoming trial of her former assistants, Francesca and Elisabetta Grillo, who were accused of spending more than $1 million on household credit card and taxi accounts, The Guardian reported Friday.
During the trial, which began at the end of November, Lawson admitted using cocaine and marijuana, and her ex-husband, art dealer Charles Saatchi, was characterized as a menacing bully.
"What I liked, not being terribly confrontational as a person, is that because you taste everything blind, you're never making any judgments on a person and you're just talking about the food," Lawson told Radio Times. "So much of reality TV is the theater of humiliation or in some sense the culture of the breast-heaving backstory, so to have a food competition that is actually about the food is ... rather pleasant."
When asked about the difference between herself and her co-judges on the reality cooking show "The Taste" -- chefs Ludo Lefebvre and Anthony Bourdain - Lawson said: "What I would say -- and this is not about the food, it is about the personality -- is that, as a general rule, chefs are conflict-driven, they are perfectionist, they are risk-takers. Whereas home cooks tend to be conflict-averse -- well, I am -- not necessarily risk-takers, and we seek to use food to bring harmony, for whatever reason."
