Food Jammers is a cooking show featuring Micah Donovan, Chris Martin, and Nobu Adilman; three backyard mechanics who make homebrew cooking equipment using junkyard parts, found objects, and locally sourced ingredients. Cooking is essentially an excuse for them to build things. Inspired by an interest in music and vernacular culture, Food Jammers features a wide range of bands from the likes of Comets on Fire, Snooky Pryor, Stereolab, and Joel Plaskett. The trio is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and they often shop at local Toronto markets, scrap yards, and the curb-side to find things for their cooking. Three seasons of thirteen episodes have been filmed, plus a one hour special. In the United States, it airs on Cooking Channel and Halogen TV.
Story Quest: To make enough hard apple cider to make it through the winter months. They’ll turn a ton of apples into hard apple cider in the loft using a DIY apple crusher/juice extractor. Contraption: An apple grinder with a fruit hopper, and a screw-turn juice press with a hard wood barrel-like pulp gatherer. With fall coming on, the Food Jammers decide to make enough hard cider to get them through the winter. By visiting an orchard and a fermentation expert, the guys learn not only how to make cider, but how to make it hard. Back at the loft, the guys make their own apple grinder and a hand cranked press, so soon they are drinking their own delicious cider.
Story Quest: To create a taco vending machine, as a fresh fast food alternative that is accessible anytime. Contraption: Vending machine with taco maker, heater, full topping selector. The Food Jammers want instant access to fresh tacos close to home so they make a taco vending machine. The guys consult with a Mexican chef, a vending machine company to overcome the tricky mechanics of providing fresh food on demand. In the end, the Food Jammers are able to enjoy fresh and tasty hot chicken tacos any time they want.
Story Quest: To make a bagel rivaling New York’s (no problem) and Montreal’s (possible, but going to be hard). To make the most of the best elements at hand, like wind power, local water, and hard wood fire. Contraption: A wind powered mill for grinding flour and wood oven for baking. The lack of good local bagels drives the Food Jammers to harness wind power and make their own. Chris, Micah and Nobu gather advice from a windmill expert, bagel baker and the proprieter of an organic mill to help them in their quest. Soon the guys are pulling fresh bagels out of their home-built wood oven and enjoying the flavours that the local wind, water, earth and fire bring to their bagels.
Story Quest: To smoke pork in a filing cabinet, in an office. Contraption: A smoker filing cabinet. Nobu is stuck with an office job but Micah and Chris aren’t about to let their friend get lost in the 9 to 5 by offering to turn his filing cabinet into a meat smoker. Their research includes talking with a restauranteur and a butcher to ensure that their meat will be the sweetest. The Food Jammers engineer the transformation over the weekend so they can enjoy delicious smoked pork sandwiches come Monday, with Nobu’s boss being none the wiser.
tory Quest: To make a couple varieties of cheeses in the loft – a first for all three Jammers. Contraption: Bacteria cave for the cheese rounds to grow. One of the world’s great staples, cheese is the result of a mysterious combination of mould, milk, rennet and enzymes – a challenge the Food Jammers cannot resist. Nobu, Chris and Micah call on a cheese-maker and a sheep farmer to learn all of the delicate steps to produce a beautiful mould-covered round of sheep’s cheese. The guys convert their fridge into a bacteria cave – a cool and dark place to allow the cheese to gestate, and in a few weeks, the guys are digging into their delicious round with crackers and wine.
Story Quest: To discover and make dumplings from all over the world and put them under one unified roof. Contraption: A versatile dumpling specific cooking mechanism on which to steam, boil, grill and fry. As well as a heating stadium/city council in which to keep the dumplings warm until it’s time to eat. The Food Jammers become intrigued with the universal comfort food, dumplings. In an effort to bring together an international congregation of dumplings for the first International Dumpling Day, the guys visit chefs of different national cuisines. Recipes in hand, the Food Jammers build a cooking stadium, that allows them to boil, steam, grill and fry a globe-spanning selection of tasty dumplings.
Story Quest: To make their own ‘airplane’ food. Contraption: Custom made trays and containers with a built-in heating system. In an era marked by declining quality of food and service on most airlines, Micah, Chris and Nobu decide to make their own airplane food to get them through their next trip. With advice from a friendly flight attendant, the Food Jammers get to work developing their own menus, and designing their own trays with built-in heating systems. With their own flight simulator in the loft, the guys sit down and enjoy fresh, nutritious and most importantly, delicious portable meals.
Story Quest: To put on an edible art show in a gallery. Contraption: Tools and edible presentational devices to allow for the advent of vertical food. The Food Jammers decide to put on an edible art show. They get invaluable inspiration from an expert pastry chef and silk-screening artist but it doesn’t answer all their problems. The challenges are in keeping the food on the wall, and keeping it fresh. Their efforts exhaust them, but in the end, their art opening is an artistic and edible success.
Story Quest: To make breakfast on-the-go a quicker, tastier and efficient experience Contraption: Centrifugal pancake maker The Food Jammers want to inject a little life into the traditional breakfast, a meal that seems to have lost its prominence due to busy lives. The guys seek out the help of a Chinese bun and pastry maker, a breakfast hot-spot restaurant owner and a steel cutting expert to help them revitalize breakfast. For the on-the-go weekdays, the guys make a breakfast loaf in which every slice is loaded with bacon, eggs and vegetables, and for the weekend brunch, they assemble a centrifuge to cook the perfect pancake.
Story Quest: The Guys seek out vegan super foods that provide an ultra healthy alternative culminating in a highly nutritious and enjoyable meal. Contraption: A sprout space pod that allows trays of sprouts to rotate around a lighting source that is rated for constant summer sunshine. It is winter time, and the Food Jammers are craving some fresh, live green food. They visits a nutritionist, a sprout-grower and an indoor environment specialist from whom they learn that living plants are better for the body. After a week of building, planting and waiting, Chris, Micah and Nobu harvest raw, nutritious sprouts and make a green meal budding with life.
Being sick is a drag, so the Food Jammers build their own customized gurney to keep remedies and comfort foods within reach. A Chinese herbalist gives guidance on the best foods and remedies to have at hand, while the guys seek out opera technicians to learn the use of pulleys and ropes to deliver the goods. From the comfort of their completed sick bed, the Jammers taste their digestible and delicious remedies and instantly start to feel better.
Story Quest: To create a meal through chance and improvisation with an outcome that amazes it’s chefs. To be able to cook together and still surprise each other with a mystery meal. Contraption: A divided cooking area which allows three to cook simultaneously without seeing what the others are preparing. The Food Jammers like the idea of cooking together, but would like to incorporate some mystery and surprise into each meal. With the help of various experts and advisers – including a psychic – Chris, Micah and Nobu build a three way rotating kitchen, that allows them to cook without the others seeing what each Food Jammer is doing. The kitchen rotates between the guys, giving them all a stab at working on each meal, even though they have no idea what each meal is, until the end when they get to taste their mystery collaborative dishes.
Story Quest: To make enough Maple Syrup to feed a hungry horde of pancake eaters. Contraption: An evaporation tank that boils down the sap into maple syrup. It is the first thaw and the Jammers are psyched to go out and tap the sap of sugar maples to make homemade maple syrup. They convert Chris’ car, Uncle Gummers, into a portable sugar shack and head out to the country to find enough trees to extract their syrup. After successfully making maple syrup, the Guys head back to the loft where they set up for an elaborate feast boiling a sweet and hearty meal in their newly tapped syrup.
