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Guerilla Chefs Proposal
for a Documentary Series _________________________________________________________________ The Concept
Briar Patch
Productions proposes “Guerilla Chefs,” a documentary series about professional
cooks working in adverse conditions with gourmet results. They will overcome obscure locations and
endless obstacles – a la “Survivor.” We will witness the tensions, anxieties
and triumphs of these chefs firsthand. This is action-packed “reality TV.” In each
half-hour episode, our host will visit an exciting new venue where we will meet
the guest chef. The host will do quick
interviews with the dinner guests, review the on-hand supplies and ingredients,
and reveal the challenges of this location. Will the guest chef manage the
demands of the river-rafting expedition, tree planting camp, or island
wedding? The viewers watch firsthand as
the experts conjure up a sumptuous feast. Although the
locations will take us throughout “Guerilla
Chefs” will be entertaining and educational. It will appeal to home cooks and
professionals of all ages: from young adults just learning to prepare meals, to
“seasoned” homemakers learning some new tips and tricks! The series of 13 episodes will be tied
together with one common theme - the love of food.
Episode Ideas
Tree Planting Camp We fly into the Diamond Exploration Camp It’s so far north here we expect to see Santa Claus at any moment. Weather conditions are extreme - temperatures reach a minus 70, with winds up to 100k. Here they use refrigerators to prevent the provisions from freezing. It’s no wonder the crew feel deprived and expect comfort food from the kitchen. Requests range from high-end sushi to cheese-whiz on waffles. Supplies have to be ordered in from Yellowknife, which isn’t a food Mecca - items that are readily available elsewhere will easily get a “huh?” here. This is Easter dinner, so the pressure is on to make it extra special for a homesick crew. While they crack hollow eggs to find caviar, we prepare sauces to accompany golden mantle oysters. A salad of braised asparagus and artichoke is followed by roast leg of lamb on potato, squash and tomato tian. Dinner is completed with Greek cheese pies and chocolate-orange Easter egg truffles. Freighter As we climb endless lengths of Jacob’s ladders to the deck, boarding this behemoth is daunting to say the least. Once onboard we could easily imagine being in another country – races from all over the world work these freighters and our job is to come up with a gourmet food that appeals to Muslim, Asian, Greek and English tastes. This menu would definitely be called “Fusion Food.” The crew has been at sea for several months, so let’s serve a special treat to remind them of home. Vancouver is a great place to shop for all ethnic tastes as you will see when we take a quick tour of Chinatown and Granville Island. Dinner will feature grilled baby vegetables, shrimp with red curry, braised beef with mild green curry and fragrant jasmine rice followed by broiled banana slices with pecan ice cream.
River Rafting The greatest challenge here is to pack bare essentials - 1500 pounds of supplies and equipment are carried by white-water rafts down the mighty Thompson River to land on a rocky shoreline. Surrounded by the Thompson Canyon walls, we unpack and build a fire in preparation for dinner at our overnight campsite. Zip-lock bags replace mixing bowls as we
marinate local game and make “baggie ice cream” from scratch – no muss, no
fuss! While dinner is prepared, guests
are given cotton balls and petroleum jelly and given ½ hour to figure out what
to do with it (fire starter). Both German and Japanese rafters are thrilled to
dine on Salmon Gravlax (caught and marinated on the trip), local elk steaks with
wild berry sauce and mango ice cream. Film Set At 3:00 a.m. we join our guest chef and her assistants on a Vancouver film set. We have 150 meals to prepare from scratch in less than 6 hours and that includes special dietary and vegan requests from the stars. Just a few hours before lunch, the film crew asks us to have it ready two hours earlier. After a few quick changes to the menu, anything is possible, and we are ready to serve. But the film crew now asks us to hold lunch for two hours! We learn how to “revive” food after sitting in a steam table for too long, and how to avoid cooked vegetables from getting that “tired” look. Finally we get the green light to serve: pasta shells filled with wild mushrooms and prosciutto, vegan shells with silken tofu in miso broth, and steamed lemon-garlic broccoli branches. Gourmet and healthy! Dude Ranch The ranch hands deftly butcher a side of venison and build the campfire. Tonight’s menu is grilled venison steak marinated in Coca-Cola, and several delectable items cooked in a Dutch oven over the open fire. During the evening, fresh baked olive bread and carrot cake are removed from tin coffee cans. Warming ovens are built: small holes dug and filled with hot coals for the accompaniments to wait for the last-minute grilling. There is plenty of beer leftover, so in preparation for the morning, we bake delicious sweet bread for breakfast. The Australians call it damper but it also works with Canadian Ales - flour, salt, beer, sugar and dried fruit bake in the Dutch oven –smells so good it may not keep until morning. Island Wedding Five separate tiers of the wedding cake are gingerly placed aboard an aluminum skiff to be assembled on site and we take off amidst stacks of “hot boxes” to Keats Island - beautiful, picturesque and not one grocery store, bakery or restaurant in existence. Upon arriving we meet the rental people and put the final touches to the tent. We use local ivy and salal branches to decorate the posts and make centerpieces for the tables. Next, the cake is put together with the help of skewers and surrounded by wild flowers – the look is “au natural.” The luncheon is served: smoked fish and marinated seafood, chevre and spinach-filled grilled chicken breasts, and for the vegans - hazelnut and wild mushroom stuffed portabello mushrooms … who needs meat! Dinner Train This kitchen is not for the claustrophobic! Loading provisions on board is like watching fifty clowns at the circus pile into a Volkswagen. Organization is the key to putting this meal together. Shake, rattle and roll – everything has to be tied down- pots and pans can go flying so nothing is left lying around. Speed and organization are essential as there is only so much space to plate the meals and arrange the garnish – a finely tuned assembly line strategically places rosemary sprigs atop layers of pistachio crusted salmon, garlic mashed potatoes and bouquets of baby bok choy. Fishing Lodge We fly into isolated Langara Lodge by float plane via Alert Bay. Located at the very tip of the Queen Charlotte Islands just 20 miles south of Alaska, this unique fishing resort is on a floating barge and the only way to get here is by plane or boat. Hard-core anglers from all over the world mingle with first-time locals and swap “the one that got away” stories. But the conversation tonight is about food. The guests have been promised an Italian feast with fresh fettucine to accompany even fresher seafood, and Caesar salad. We hastily unpack the supplies and discover the romaine lettuce has almost boiled from the journey and the fettucine is missing, so we decide to make it from scratch. Noodles hang to dry like strips of cloth on a clothesline in preparation for seafood fettucine with local mussels, scallops and crab. A delicious salad is made from sea cucumber marinated in Italian herbs (to replace the Caesar) and the Tiramisu gets a round of applause. Rock and Roll Band It’s past midnight and the band plays a final encore. We go through a checklist of items requested for the green room. The bar is stocked and platters of hors d’oeuvres surround bouquets of flowers and candies. The road manager checks in and hands us their latest whimsy: caviar, silver candelabras, Dim Sum and barbequed chicken. All the stores are closed but undaunted, we enlist in this madcap “treasure hunt”. Only two hours later the requests are procured and served – beluga caviar on toast points, pork and vegetarian dumplings with dipping sauce, red hot chicken pieces, a bowl of M&M’s, candlelight and silver service for eight. Authentic First Nations Potlatch The small town of Skidegate is host to over 500 guests and First Nations dignitaries taking part in the traditional potlatch (meaning “to give”). Ten elder women have been preparing the feast for days that includes sockeye salmon, bannock bread and delicacies such as oolichan grease and K’aaw (herring roe kelp) for the head table. Just as the last meal is over, fifteen politicians and VIP’s arrive by helicopter – they didn’t RSVP! The town’s reputation is at stake and they must be served; the worst thing of all is to run out of food. So kids go scrambling from house to house, women whisper to each other and run home to raid their freezers and the local storekeeper scurries off to grab potatoes, carrots and onions. The foragers return with nuked salmon and octopus. It is grilled and served in record time followed by traditional soapberry ice cream and wild berries with Oolican grease – an acquired taste! Oppenheimer Park Christmas Dinner In it’s twelfth year, 2,500 needy and homeless people in Vancouver’s East End are served turkey dinner from the film industry’s catering trucks. Over one hundred volunteers pick up turkeys, tin foil containers and cooking instructions a few days beforehand and deliver the finished product to the trucks. We serve traditional turkey dinner with three stuffings - Italian chestnuts and pancetta, cornbread and herbed oysters and classic bread stuffing. Our local fishmonger contributes cases of cod to this worthy cause and we bake the fillets with herb-stuffing crust. Pumpkin cheesecakes are sliced and served by Santa and his countless helpers… The line-up winds around a few blocks and big cheers all around when Santa arrives…. The Producers In the past
18 years, Christian Bruyère has written, produced or directed over 50
documentaries and dramas for film and television. Most recently, he produced
and executive produced the CBC television movie Scorn, starring Eric Johnson, directed by Sturla Gunnarsson;
supervise-produced the CBC series for Water Street Pictures, Edgemont; and co-produced, with partner
Mary Bissell, the one-hour CBC television documentary A Bog In My Backyard. Since late 1996, Bruyère has also been
producing Champions Of The Wild, a
wildlife advocacy series for Omni Film Productions Ltd., Discovery Channel
Canada and Europe Images International.
Currently in its fifth season of production, the series has earned
numerous international film and television awards. Mary Bissell
produced, directed, wrote and hosted A
Bog In My Backyard, a one hour documentary for CBC’s Rough Cuts that examined the environmental conflict over an
endangered wetland. The documentary
originated from Bissell’s Master’s thesis project at Simon Fraser University in
British Columbia. With her partner,
Christian Bruyère, Bissell recently produced the documentary Daughters of Freedom for WTN’s flagship series, Through Her Eyes. A
heart-rending profile of how children of Doukhobor parents were seized from
their family in the 1950s and incarcerated in a school dormitory, Daughters of Freedom is “a study in
irony and the power of the human spirit”, says Alex Strachan of the Vancouver
Sun. About
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