Annabel Crabb on what happens behind the scenes of Kitchen Cabinet and the importance of a travel-hardy dessert

Picture this… Annabel Crabb checking in at an airport, popping her signature wicker basket through security screening and boarding a plane, hoping the precious contents of her basket survive the flight and the change in weather conditions between the place of departure and the destination – the home of a politician she's filming for her show, Kitchen Cabinet.

Returning after seven years, the new series profiles former Home Affairs minister Karen Andrews, Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, Western Sydney Independent Dai Le, Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie, Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John, Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe and Labor Minister Anika Wells.

Crabb has travelled to the Gold Coast, Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane, Wodonga and Sydney and her logistical challenge – aside from the interview itself, of course — is always how to make sure the dessert she's carefully crafted is delivered in the best shape possible.

"My friend Wendy Sharpe, with whom I've written a couple of cookbooks, is an imaginative cook and she helps me with the recipes, so we'll go through who is this person, what's their background, I might ask them what sort of dessert do you like?"

"For example, Peter Dutton said he loves custard, and I thought okay that figures, so I made him a custard slice, but I put in some tweaks that I thought might appeal to a Queensland cop… like rum and coffee," she explains.

"So, we come up with a dessert that's appropriate, looks nice on television and that will cope with a couple of hours in a plane [if we're travelling interstate].

"Then, I make the dessert in my own kitchen, I'll do a few trial runs first and once I'm confident I can make it, I devise a way of transporting it."

"At airports I carry the dessert in my basket, which fits into the plane's overhead compartment, and people tend to recognise me and know what I am doing but travelling to Perth with food can be tricky, because they're VERY conscious of what you take into the West.

"I've been pulled up at Perth airport with cake forks several times, so I've also learned that cutlery can be an issue!"

There have — over the previous six seasons, which aired between 2012 and 2016 — been occasions when the dessert didn't last the distance.

"Probably my biggest disaster was the brandy snap baskets I made for Craig Emerson in 2012, which were supposed to be filled with passion fruit curd and berries," she recalls.

"They were a MASSIVE pain in the arse to make and then I made the mistake of transporting them in a vintage tin whose beauty sadly outshone its actual airtightness.

"Combined with the Brisbane humidity, my crisp little baskets became flat, flabby discs.

"You'll notice in that episode that the camera doesn't linger on the dessert!

"Also, in the last Kitchen Cabinet that went to air – two days before the 2016 election – I took Bill Shorten a picnic."

"Foolishly, I once again relied on a vintage item – a fabulous old picnic case.

"The Thermos leaked all over the sandwiches.

"Shorten very politely ate soggy sandwiches without complaint."

Of course, the show is not really about food, either Crabb's creation or her interviewee's.

Rather, what politicians reveal about their personal and political lives during a relaxed conversation in the comfort of their kitchen, freed from the straitjacket of scripted 'talking points', evasions and snappy sound grabs that usually pepper daily political discourse.

"The food is essentially a device," she says.

"It gives people something to do with their hands and it's something that they can concentrate on or switch to talking about if they feel uncomfortable.

"If I'm going too far with something personal they go 'oh, I think the beans are boiling'!

"It's a bit like how you have the best conversations with teenagers when driving in a car to footy training or somewhere and you're not looking at each other.

"Somehow, you get more out of that conversation.

"This is the same thing; my main aim is to make them forget that they're doing a televised interview so they will tell me more stuff."

Crabb came up with the idea for the show after years working as a political journalist in the Canberra press gallery and says Kitchen Cabinet aims to give the audience a new insight into their elected representatives.

This season showcases the diversity of the current parliament, with the eight politicians featured having very different life stories and paths into politics.

"I always thought it was interesting that when you met politicians when it wasn't in a formal interview situation you often learned a lot more about them and it was always useful in predicting how they were going to jump on certain issues because politicians are humans with huge subjectivity," she says.

"The thing that they will pursue and pursue and pursue or the thing that they will expend some political capital on is something that's important to them because of something that happened to them in their life.

"I don't think Kitchen Cabinet is a substitute for political coverage — people critique the show and say oh, you're giving them a soft ride.

"Well, I interview people who get a hard time on the ABC all the time but I'm trying to find out stuff that you wouldn't be able to find out if you had your boots on their throat in an interview.

"It's a delicate balance too — sometimes, if I'm asking about something very, very personal I will canvass it with a politician in advance.

"Every single politician we elect has a back-story that dictates the way they behave in politics and whether you love or loathe them, it's always worth knowing that story."

To avoid interrupting the flow of conversation, four cameras are set up in the politician's home and film pretty much non-stop for about four and a half hours.

"The point of having so many cameras is that you can set up, light the place and then I can just step in and have a conversation where we're not stopping and starting and saying 'will you please say that again down camera two' or whatever," Crabb explains.

"I've also got a very handy crew who've been with this show for a long time — director Stamatia Maroupas, director of photography Josh Flavell, sound recordist Gavin Marsh, camera operator Ben Lindberg, makeup artist Belinda Weber — somehow they manage to make a high-quality half hour of TV in one day, which is almost unheard-of.

"And executive producer Madeleine Hawcroft has been there since the very beginning when she spent every shoot wearing my newborn baby in a sling, walking around the location outside with an earbud in her ear listening as I did the interview inside.

"That's how committed this brilliant crew is.

"We only have our guests for one day.

"It's hard enough to get one day out of the working politician's schedule let alone an opposition leader or minister, so we've got to get it all done fast.

"I prepare a list of questions, but I don't really ever have them in front of me.

"I don't walk in with a notebook.

"From the first second the cameras roll, I try to engage them in conversation in such an absorbing way that they forget that there are cameras there, and, weirdly enough, even though it's an incredibly awkward set up it's amazing how quickly they do relax."

What helps is the politician's choice of cuisine.

They're advised to choose something they feel comfortable cooking and has some meaning to them.

"You don't want somebody to undertake to make a souffle and then have a meltdown on camera because it's flopped," Crabb says.

"You want them to feel like they're going to pull this off.

"We don't expect people to be brilliant cooks in fact, sometimes it's hilarious when they aren't.

"Joe Hockey was highly under qualified to be in the kitchen but that was quite amusing.

"Mind you, I think the world has a different view of men who can't cook from women who can't cook.

"Often the women politicians I talk to are much more anxious about whether the meal works because they know they'll be judged for not being able to cook much more than men will be.

"But that's a conversation for another time!"

When the dinner and filming is finished, Crabb and the crew help do the dishes and pack up.

As she tidies up production of this series, Crabb contemplates what could make a delicious dream episode – all eight guests breaking bread together around her dinner table.

"I think this series is the most interesting one we've made, there are so many revelations," she says.

"There are two of my guests, who have never had a conversation with each other which I find absolutely stunning — two very high-profile people, I can't tell you who because it's a hilarious moment in the series.

"But this is something that is weird about parliament.

"Sometimes people who disagree with each other, and even people who agree with each other on some things, do not have conversations with each other.

"And I think that's madness.

"I would have anybody on this series over to my house and preferably all of them at once because it would be a great night."

Kitchen Cabinet begins Tuesday, August 15, at 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview