Eastleigh
The Kitchen Cabinet
BBC
4.6 • 726 Ratings
🗓️ 23 August 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jay Rayner and the expert panel are answering questions from an audience of food lovers in Eastleigh, Hampshire with inspiration for carrot-based dishes and inventive ways of cooking with pears.
They help conjure suppers out of corner-shop finds, explain the art of preparing sweetbreads and tap into the area’s maritime heritage as they sail through the history of dining on the high seas.
On this week’s panel are chefs, cooks and food writers Jocky Petrie, Sophie Wright and Shelina Permalloo, alongside resident food historian Dr Annie Gray.
Senior Producer: Dom Tyerman Assistant Producer: Dulcie Whadcock
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism. |
| 0:09.0 | In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero? |
| 0:16.0 | Simply doing your job, being a decent human being. |
| 0:20.0 | A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by |
| 0:23.1 | their own light and that light is to be recognized by others. The long history of heroism with me, |
| 0:28.6 | Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:37.5 | Hello and welcome to the kitchen cabinet this week. We're in Hampshire and just a fraction |
| 0:41.5 | outside Southampton in the town of Eastleigh at the Point Theatre. |
| 0:44.8 | Joining me with no point left to prove and raring to go as we kick off our 49th series |
| 0:49.4 | is a panel of some of the world's finest food obsessives to help both our live audience |
| 0:53.9 | and you at home |
| 0:54.5 | with your kitchen quandaries. We don't promise miracles, but we might be able to serve as your |
| 0:59.2 | emotional support cooks. So, please welcome chefs and food writers Sophie Wright, Jockey Petrie |
| 1:04.6 | and Chelina Purmeloo, and alongside them, a woman with one foot in the past and the other |
| 1:09.1 | foot in the past. |
| 1:13.4 | It's our resident food historian, Dr. Annie Gray. |
| 1:15.2 | Ladies and gentlemen, your kitchen cabinet panel. |
| 1:27.4 | Now, back in the early 50s, Clarence Bird's Eye famously tested various prototype fish products on the lucky people of |
| 1:28.2 | Southampton as he prepared to take the mighty fish finger to market. |
| 1:32.0 | Cod fingers ultimately won out against herring savories in the testing and a star was born. |
| 1:36.6 | So panel, what I'd like to know is if you could have been around as a tester in the development |
| 1:41.2 | of a food, which would it have been? Jockey, developing recipes is |
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