Edible Art on TV

food jammers [image credit]

I just watched this episode of Food Jammers and I really had to share!

In "Gallery Eats Art" the Food Jammers try to make edible art.  They investigate making pigments out of food, screen printing onto crackers and crepes, painting on pizza dough, sculpture with gelatin and freezies, and more.  The pizza didn't actually make it up on the gallery wall because it dripped when they hung it, but it was a cool idea.

Obviously these guys are more interested in the technical aspects than the aesthetic aspects.  Or maybe I should say they probably didn't have enough time within the parameters of the show to really learn how to use the edible components.  A lot of their projects are more about the challenge of making it work on all of the necessary levels (taste, smell, sight, texture, etc) and not really in depth exploration of edible art, but what can you really say, it's a 30 minute episode.  Some of what they made was interesting, and they invited some friends to also submit work to the gallery.  My favorite was the preserved cabbage in a giant block of agar-agar, but it didn't taste very good (apparently).  I'm also impressed that they managed to make so many successful screen prints onto a cracker using edible ink.

pizza painting with edible pigments

When we were watching this show, JewishGuy said to me he wonders if these guys are chefs or if they're just a bunch of stoners who like to see what they can do with food or what gadgets they can make.  It's the Mythbusters of the food world, I guess.  In any case, it doesn't seem to matter if they are classically trained (culinarily speaking) because it's pretty fun to watch them futz around with machinery and gadgets.  As someone who appreciates the process sometimes more than the product, it's a pretty fun show to watch.  And though I'm not from Toronto, I've been there a lot and I recognize some of the places they end up (like the store "nuts make the world go round" - I think that's the name of the store - in this episode, I don't think I went in but I remember passing it once on the way to lunch with someone).

In any case, it made me interested in the idea of bringing food into art making, especially with clients.  Some people have done food projects in art therapy, but mostly just regular baking, not necessarily exploring food as an art material.  I'm interested especially in screen printing, potentially screen printing on cookies or cakes - what an interesting idea!

You might be able to watch the episode on ovguide, but I'm not sure it's really supposed to be up there, so I don't know how long it will last.  If not, check out the episode's page on CookingChannelTV.com for when it's on next and set your DVR if you're really interested!