Can We Make St Paul's Cathedral out of Fluorescent Jelly? Gastronuts

Let's find out what our task is.

Can we make St Paul's Cathedral from fluorescent jelly and then eat it?

The Gastronuts joining me on this artistic quest are:

I don't think food can be a work of art because

your parents tell you not to play with your food.

If I were to make a house out of jelly, I'd use strawberry jelly,

it's the colour of bricks and it's my favourite flavour.

Coming up on today's show:

The Gastronuts build a fantasy food photo.

I think we need to come up with a name for this place.

-How about Gastroland?

-ALL:

-Yeah.

We put on a performance with a vegetable medley.

I discover what a llama is doing in a supermarket

and we try to make an edible St Paul's Cathedral

-that glows in the dark.

-ALL: Wow!

So do you reckon we can make art out of food?

I've made a tree out of chips.

-That's cool.

-I've tried to make a face out of bread.

-Did it work?

-Er, no.

-I saw a picture of the Mona Lisa made out of toast.

What did you think about it?

It was clever the way they'd made the lines out of the burned bits.

-Why do you think you do it?

-To be creative

and maybe you haven't got anything else to do.

It's a bit weird and fun.

Can we can discover things about food

by making it into something different?

I like transforming foods into stuff.

Does what food looks like influence how much you enjoy it?

Yeah, because food that looks quite bad

tastes the best.

-Food that looks bad tastes the best?

-Like curry.

-Who likes chocolate?

-ALL: Me.

-Who likes making a mess?

-ALL: Me.

-Who likes making a noise?

-ALL: Me!

-Come on then, let's go.

So, Gastronuts, Prudence. Prudence, Gastronuts.

Hello, Gastronuts.

-GASTRONUTS: Hello.

-Tell us what you do.

I'm a chocolate artist. I make everything out of food.

You can actually eat my work.

I make life-size chocolate sofas,

huge life-size chocolate rooms with solid chocolate fireplaces,

with lick-able wallpaper. Does that sound good?

-Yeah.

-You can eat it all, that's the idea.

OK. So that is the Mona Lisa.

The question is, Prudence, can you make the Mona Lisa out of chocolate?

I think we can do a good job. I need your help, though, to help me do it.

-Are you up for this?

-ALL: Yeah.

First of all, we need an outline of Mona.

It's like painting with numbers,

but we're painting with food.

This is our paint pallet.

We're going to follow Prudence's example and make fine art

out of fine chocolates, sweets and crisps.

It's like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

But this isn't just a laugh.

Prudence sells some of her creations for thousands of pounds.

And we need to work out what colours can make up,

her dress and her hair, so, here, we can make the sky.

It's quite a light colour, so these twists might be good for that.

Marshmallows would be good. Some almonds.

In these bowls here we have melted white chocolate

and dark chocolate and this will be our edible glue.

This must be the best art class ever.

Instead of glue we're using melted chocolate

and instead of dried pasta,

we're using crisps, marshmallows and sweets.

Have you ever decided to start eating your work halfway through?

Sometimes, I'll be honest with you, yeah.

A lot of the materials are tasty.

What other things have you made in the past?

All sorts of things.

Replicas of people made out of solid chocolate,

so you can rip an arm off.

-It's like cannibalism.

-It is a bit.

You could eat your own head.

That's the more scary side of things.

I know this is fun, but why do you do it?

I want people to be able to experience art by touch and tasting

and ultimately digesting it,

it's about looking at food in a different way.

Art would definitely look different

if we had to digest it and then poo it out.

Different, though maybe not better.

OK, we need to do her face.

If you don't like what you've made,

you can just eat it so there's no waste.

There are perks to creating edible art,

such as eating your materials.

-I think this is the last bit.

-The last green jelly bean.

-I think we're done.

-Yeah.

-Brilliant. Well done, guys.

Do you think you've made a pretty good

-semblance of the picture?

-Not really.

I think it's really good, but only because it's made of sweets.

-It looks nothing like Mona Lisa.

-You're not supposed to say that!

Yeah, but where's her hand?

Her hand got buried under a mound of coconut.

I like it because it's made out of sweets.

There's one thing that's never been asked in any art history course

of any art before -

what does the Mona Lisa taste like? Dig in.

It feels good. You don't, like, paint a picture

and the teacher shouts "We're going to eat it."

I feel a bit naughty.

I think I could keep a Mona Lisa without eating it,

but I don't think it would last very long with my mum around!

I never thought I would be able to say this,

but I know what the Mona Lisa's hair tastes like.

It feels silly to begin with,

but after a while you look at food differently.

You explore the textures, colours and shapes

in a way that you never did before,

so I don't know what it means yet,

but there's something really important in making art out of food.

Have you had breakfast and turned it into a face using two eggs,

-a sausage for the mouth and a tomato for the nose?

-ALL: Yeah.

Quite cool, isn't it? I'm going to introduce you to a guy

who uses that idea, but takes it to extremes.

OK, follow me.

-Gastronuts, Carl. Carl, Gastronuts.

-Hello, Gastronuts, nice to meet you.

Meet Carl Warner, a man who creates food photos that

don't just look good enough to eat, they look good enough to live in.

Take a look at this beautiful photograph.

Now, take a closer look.

Carl's created a whole new series of worlds,

using fish as waves, marrows as boats and crab shells as rocks.

He also creates fields out of courgettes, corn and asparagus,

buildings from carrots and cheese,

and even balloons from apples and strawberries.

Now, it's our turn to create a landscape,

but how can we ever live up to his high standards?

We're going to make a broccoli forest,

similar to this because we know that

broccoli looks like trees and it's very easy.

We're going to have a little farmhouse

and we're going to make that out of Stilton cheese.

We're going to put a little wishing well,

and inside the wishing well we're going to put some dip.

When we've taken the picture, we'll get some bits of broccoli

-and we can dunk them in the dip and eat it.

-Wish while we eat it.

We can wish for a really nice picture at the end of it all.

GASTRONUTS: Yeah!

The foodscape starts off

with just a few polystyrene blocks stuck to a board.

If you two guys want to get on top

and we're going to start handing you some curly kale.

We're using kale, a type of frilly cabbage, to provide the bushes.

The hardest thing is to try and make it look like a realistic scene.

There's two massive children in the midst of this vast mountain range.

Ah, yes, they're not actually supposed to be part of it.

You look at food in a different way.

I look at food all the time and think,

"I don't see food, I just see trees and kind of rocks."

You must go to the grocers and go,

-"Oh, yes, I can see something different."

-Yeah.

Do you think when you make art out of food

that you eat things in a different way?

Sometimes we eat our food really fast, you know,

and I think it's nice to stop and look at it and to smell it

and to look at its texture, because you know,

food can be enjoyed in other ways, not just by tasting it.

Do you want to look through the camera?

-It looks good.

-It's cool.

I'm going to give you all some broccoli

and you're going to put some broccoli trees in it now.

Lovely. Just go up the hill a little bit.

Further into the middle. That's good. Yes, that's the perfect place.

To my extreme surprise, the food landscape is starting to take shape.

Especially, now Dane's added a path made from crushed peanuts.

I've been working on the farmhouse and the wishing well.

These have to be detailed, especially the wishing well.

It's right up close the camera. So this is what I've been working on.

-Can you see what it's made from?

-That's cool.

There's crackers on the roof.

You guys can help me with the house

which is made from a great big lump of cheese. Look at that.

Which cracker would make a good roof?

Which would you prefer? You like that one?

That's a good choice.

I've used another type of cracker on this roof,

so this is like a different cracker, so it's using more variety.

It looks nicer, it's more yummier.

Here is Carl's original drawing

on it, he's got two chimneys.

That's it, on the top.

I have to cut a piece out, that's it.

So, like Carl's drawing, one at each end.

Doing the house, Carl. Getting on with it.

-The girls have been helping.

-A Stilton house. Smelly?

-Very smelly.

-Bit mouldy?

-Well, yes.

-Mouldy old house.

-That's what we like about it.

You wouldn't live in it, would you?

Do you know what? I would.

I would live in a house of cheese.

Here's one for the Gastronuts.

The wishing well takes centre stage in the spotlight.

-How's it looking?

-It looks good.

See how nice it is cos it's catching the sunlight?

There isn't any sun.

The sun is behind you. That light is pretending to be the sun.

Have you ever done it outside and used actual sunlight?

No, because the sun moves in the sky,

whereas here I can have the sun staying in the same place all day.

-So I can freeze time.

-It's not actually about reality.

It's about illusion, isn't it?

I call it a pleasant deception.

You are fooled into thinking it's one scene and then see it's another.

The magic of all of that is really getting inside this world.

Once I look through the camera, I imagine this world goes off

and there are rivers and mountains in the distance.

So, in my head, I really enjoy

getting into the sense of place, you know?

I really see this as somewhere that exists,

even though it's here in the studio.

Somewhere that's been invaded by humongous water sprayers.

They're just to keep the vegetables fresh.

OK. I need it to be, as within the drawing,

it probably needs to be about here.

OK. Needs to go further into shot, down towards the valley a bit more.

Now, rotate it anticlockwise.

About there is good. Wonderful.

So has that made any of you think differently about food?

-No.

-No.

-No. 'That'll teach me to ask.'

That tree is blocking the sun a bit.

I've never noticed how extraordinary the texture of food is,

how the colours are so different.

It depends if you like cheese or not.

I don't like cheese, but I still think it looks good.

-What do you think is the coolest food here?

-The kale.

Probably the cheese house.

Yeah, I think the cheese house too,

because it's really, I'd never think of making a house out of cheese.

It's just a really absurd idea.

I think the mould on it makes it look like ivy.

It's probably easy to carve because it's so soft and sticky,

so you can put things on it.

I'm really happy with it. I think you've done a brilliant job.

I can see the trees. They kind of look a little bit bigger

than the house, which I think is cool.

And I can see the wishing well, I like the wishing well the most.

Oh wow! That's really cool.

Well, actually, when I think about it,

the path is actually really well done.

And the pathway helps to lead you into the picture.

It takes your eye through the picture.

The baskets are clever, and the little onion.

-The baskets are nice.

-That looks really cool.

I like how the broccoli is made to look like trees

and how it's bigger than the house.

Makes it look a bit more realistic.

I think we need to come up with a name for this place.

This is like a whole new world.

The wonderful village of weirdness or something.

-What about Stilton shire?

-Foodtopia.

-How about Gastroland?

-GASTRONUTS: Yeah.

With the sunlight and chimney smoke added by computer, the final image

is a breathtaking masterpiece the Gastronuts should be truly proud of.

And no fantasy foodscape would be complete

without having a go at eating it.

-Carl, thank you very very much.

-My pleasure. Wasn't it good fun?

-GASTRONUTS: Yeah.

-This is wild stuff.

When you start creating illusions with food,

you have to look at it in a whole new light

to discover things that you never knew were there before.

So far, the Gastronuts haven't moaned about eating Lisa.

It's like being in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

And they've processed some food into a curly kale kingdom.

Later on, we gobble on some glowing wobble.

I pulled off the top of St Paul's Cathedral.

But first...

I want to find out why artists are so fascinated by food

and when did their fascination begin,

so what better place to come to

than an exhibition devoted entirely to food and art?

Someone who can inspire and guide me through the fine art and food world

is curator, Cynthia Morrison-Bell,

who must be an expert on both because she's French.

Come, Stefan. Come and see this.

The first work I wanted to show you was this Salami Rain

by Lia Anna Hennig, a young German artist.

The Storm of Ham.

-Salamis of all different shapes and sizes.

-That is so cool.

For me, this is heaven.

The idea of being drowned in a rain of salami is fantastic.

It's how I want to go.

So does she mean anything serious with this

or is it just a striking idea,

a warping reality by throwing food at a kind of normal idea like rain?

I think it's more that rain makes her think of salamis.

She grew up in Italy, so I think she saw a lot of salamis

-when she grew up.

-I've got a theory here.

-Maybe artists are just really, really greedy.

-They are.

Now, Stefan, for something completely different. Take a look at this.

So, this is a work by Mona Hatoum called The Grater Divide,

and guess what it is.

-It's a massive cheese grater.

-Yes.

It looks spectacular, but why has she done this?

Why has she blown the grater up?

Mona Hatoum likes looking at the familiar objects that surround

you in the home and make them look a bit strange.

-And a little bit scary, a well.

-And scary.

If I was a piece of cheese,

I'd be looking at that cheese grater and going, "No!"

I'm very glad you're not a piece of cheese.

I am sure you've never seen a llama in supermarket, have you?

It's a new one on me.

The artist put this llama in a supermarket in Ecuador.

And this is a very, very beautiful and very funny work, really,

looking at this llama, looking at all the foodstuffs

that are in our supermarkets and really questioning

what is the foodstuff that we surround ourselves with today?

Do you think the llama is us sitting in a supermarket

not knowing what any of these things are for and thinking,

"Do I need all this stuff?"?

That's exactly how I feel about this work.

The next time you're overcome by choice in the supermarket,

remember, even animals can feel confused, so don't be a-LLAMA-ed.

Let me show you Helen Chadwick's chocolate fountain.

Wow! Is that real chocolate in there?

It's not just real chocolate, it's 800-kilos of real chocolate.

Am I allowed to scoop out a couple of handfuls?

Absolutely not. This is art.

You're torturing people by putting it in here.

You could eat it. It is real chocolate.

It's perfectly edible. There's nothing in it that would harm you,

but I'm just saying that you can't.

The first thing that hits you in the gallery

is this sickly smell of chocolate, and it's a bit like torture.

It's the desperation to want to eat something,

but not being allowed to because it's art.

Is that part of what's important?

That's exactly it.

It's the seduction and repulsion, those two contrary emotions

that you might feel in front of chocolate,

especially if you eat too much of it.

This is all amazing stuff.

Artists look at the world differently from everyone else.

They look at the things like food and the tools that we make it,

and they see that it's very beautiful

and it's got lots of stories and meaning behind it.

How can we make food that glows in the dark? Let me show you.

It's easy, actually.

All of those foods - peas, sweetcorn, even Marmite...

There's a nice letter G.

And tonic water will all glow in the dark.

What we'll do, is we'll turn the lights out and shine

a very bright ultraviolet light at them, and you can see the peas,

the corn, the Marmite

and the tonic water all glow.

Why does this happen?

Well, the tonic water contains a molecule called quinine,

and it absorbs the invisible ultraviolet light

and then releases it again as blue.

It's a process we call fluorescence,

and that's where the glow in the dark comes from.

And there are other molecules in the corn and in the peas which do

something very, very similar. Lights on, please.

And I even got a Chinese restaurant

to include quinine in one of their recipes.

And look! Can we have the lights out?

Glow-in-the-dark noodles.

How cool is that?

It's not just artists that are inspired by food,

there's also musicians.

Amazingly, there's a hugely popular professional orchestra in Austria

that plays all of its music entirely on vegetables.

Well, I thought we'd take them as inspiration

and create our own slightly smaller Gastroband.

First of all, I want you to turn around and face the window.

OK?

I'm going to make some beautiful music using a special instrument,

and I want you to guess what instrument it is that I'm playing.

MUSIC PLAYS

You're strangling a budgie.

-A kazoo.

-It's not a kazoo. Guess again.

-Is it even an instrument?

-It's so a musical instrument.

-Saxophone.

-Oh, you're so close.

Turn around! It's a massive radish.

And I bored a hole all the way down here

and put a little reed in the top, and with that...

..you can make beautiful music.

So what I wondered,

can we make a musical orchestra just using vegetables?

Yeah! They did it with whoopee cushions for Comic Relief.

I'd say this is much cooler than that.

-Are you willing to try this?

-GASTRONUTS: Yeah.

If you want to make vegetable instruments,

you will need vegetables.

Hard vegetables like butternut squash

are best for wind instruments.

A saw to cut off the end.

A spoon, used for scooping out the pulp.

A drill. Use this to make a hole all the way through the instrument.

Be careful on soft food, you could end up with soup.

Get someone who's used to handling tools to do these bits for you,

and don't ask your dad to do it if you think he might hurt himself.

A reed - cut down a straw and poke it through a small hole at the end.

And then you're ready to go and blow.

Making vegetable instruments can be a bit hit and miss,

but with some practise,

you'll find the strangest things can make the sweetest music.

William's hollowed out a pumpkin to make a drum,

and carrots can be used to make the perfect drumsticks.

Dane has gone for an aubergine, which make cool castanets,

and coconuts can make a really good shaky, noisy thing.

Now, time for our world debut.

Do you have your instruments? Yep.

We're going to attempt to play an original composition. Ready?

MUSIC BEGINS

If playing instruments made from food takes off,

then expect to be listening in future to people like

Take Fat, Justin Timbercake, the Pussycat Dolly Mixtures,

Katy Jelly and, of course, Madonna Kebab.

So, Gastronuts, I want to introduce you to two very strange people.

This is Harry and Sam.

-Hello, Gastronuts.

-Hi, Gastronuts.

These guys have a very, very odd job. Can you tell us what you do?

-We make jelly in the shape of buildings.

-Why do you do that?

Because then you can take your favourite building and eat it.

-Could we could make St Paul's Cathedral?

-GATRONUTS: Yes.

Where do you buy a mould like that for St Paul's Cathedral?

Well, you can't, so we made them.

And it all starts off in the computer,

and you draw St Paul's in 3-D, and then

you can get a special machine which prints it out like that,

and then we can use that to make a jelly mould.

-I think that's going to be really cool.

-Very, very easy to do.

You just need two ingredients.

One is a gelling agent, the other is the liquid, which we have here.

When you combine them and heat it all up and melt it down,

refrigerate it, then you get jelly.

OK, can two of you open up all these bottles and measure out

a litre and a half in this measuring jug?

It's bubbly.

When we make the jelly, you'll be able to taste those bubbles.

-Will it be fizzy jelly?

-It is.

What flavour will it be?

This particular one is made with tonic water,

but you can make jellies in any flavour at all.

We've made it with a huge variety of things,

from fresh strawberries and elderflowers

to more disgusting ones like the entire Christmas dinner in a jelly.

One layer was even Brussels sprouts.

I don't like Brussels sprouts.

Next, we need to chop up all the gelatine,

which holds this liquid together into a nice wobbly jelly.

-Isn't it something out of a cow?

-Spot-on.

It's all the really grizzly bits from animals,

things like cow's hooves, pig skins

-and all the nasty bits.

-Have you eaten jelly before?

Yeah. I didn't know it was made out of pig skin.

Why did you become jelly makers?

It's been something we've always wanted to do, and now we

get a chance to show people just how brilliant jelly is.

You pour just enough of this to come to the top of where the leaves are.

-That's perfect.

-By heating up the gelatine and tonic water,

they combine together, and once cooled they're ready for pouring.

And you can see it will be a nice fizzy jelly because all those

bubbles are going to set into the mixture.

Just like jelly at home, once poured it needs to set.

Luckily, we've had one in the fridge already doing just that.

Oh! That's so weird!

It's all squidgy.

It feels a bit harder than jelly.

OK, so now we need to unmould it.

Give it a good wobble. That's OK.

Oh, wow.

-Wow!

-Give it a wobble.

It's gone all floppy!

OK, Gastronuts, it's time to find out if it really is luminous.

So, after all that effort, will our jelly of St Paul's really glow?

Sam, are you sure this is going to work?

Well, I'll just put the UV light on and see if it does.

GASTRONUTS: Wow!

Cool.

That is amazing. Wow. It's so bright, as well.

It's more luminous than I thought.

You can see the detail more.

When it's glowing like that you can see more detail.

-What's that?

-St Paul's Cathedral.

St Paul's Cathedral!

So the question was, can we make St Paul's Cathedral

out of fluorescent jelly? Have we done it?

-GASTRONUTS: Yeah!

-But what was the other question?

GASTRONUTS: Can we eat it?

Well, can we? Yeah! Get in there!

It tastes like lemonade.

I pulled off the top of the St Paul's Cathedral.

I think Carl Warner's work has changed the way I look at food.

Instead of looking at it just as food, I think of it as a work of art.

The best thing about being on Gastronuts was making a Mona Lisa,

cos I liked eating it afterwards.

I like the way that Carl made the house out of cheese,

because I never thought you could do that with food.

Gastronuts is taste-tastic!

That's just wild.

Grown-ups say you shouldn't do it, but when you play with your food,

when you make art out of it, you give it a whole new dimension.

You make food fun, and it's like you're sprinkling

a special ingredient over everything,

and that ingredient is magic.

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