- [Announcer] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

(gentle music) (logo whooshing) - This week on "Dapper Dad's Kitchen", professional soccer player A.J.

DeLaGarza is gonna help me put together a match day fajita board.

It's gonna be great, stick around.

(upbeat music) Oh.

(pans clattering) (upbeat music) Welcome back to "Dapper Dad's Kitchen" on PBS Charlotte.

Today we've got a wonderful episode lined up for you.

We're gonna do some outside backyard match day grilling.

I've got my great friend here, great guy in the community, A.J.

DeLaGarza, MLS great.

So hey, it's great to have you on the show.

How you doing, man?

- Yeah, good, thank you for having me.

- So today we're gonna kind of embrace, you know, this summer we had a wonderful soccer summer, World Cup going on, great finish.

So what we're gonna do, we're gonna carry that over into the fall here.

We're gonna do a little match day fajita board.

Just kind of put everything together, build it together on the board.

Now, one of the things with fajitas, we're gonna use skirt steak.

Not the most tenderest piece of meat out of the package.

So we're gonna start off, we're gonna build a marinade for that.

Some of the first best ingredients you're gonna need for a marinade, especially with a tough meat like this, is gonna be some acid as well as some flavors and a little bit of oil.

For our acid, we're gonna use a little bit of lime juice, some fresh lime juice.

I've got some fresh squeezed orange juice here as well as some spices.

We've got cumin, garlic, salt, pepper, and some oregano.

So let's go ahead and get started.

I'm gonna start off here, we've got a Ziploc bag.

We're gonna do this old school style.

If you want to go ahead and dump the orange juice in there.

We've got a little bit over a half a cup in there.

I'm gonna go ahead and put in a little bit of the salt.

Sorry, that was the pepper.

A little bit of the pepper.

Then the salt.

We've got about a tablespoon of cumin.

We've got some oregano.

And then if you can hold that, let me get one of my spatulas here.

We're just gonna go ahead and put in some of the garlic.

Now get some fresh lime juice.

I always like to roll my limes a little bit on the cutting board, kind of loosen it up, get it juicy in the insides so that way when you cut into it, we can go ahead and squeeze it in there.

Hopefully these don't have a ton of seeds, but we'll go ahead and cut it.

Yep, and then I will.

So you've been playing soccer, what, your whole life, right, man?

- Yeah.

- College, MLS, been on the world stage.

Like tell me about it, man.

How did you get started into it being an American kid, growing up in the States?

- Yeah, it's funny.

My parents actually told me just recently that they put me in it because I was a mama's boy.

They wanted me to be a little bit more independent and it turned into having a 14-year professional career, so.

- [Tim] Oh, that's awesome, man.

- I'm thankful for that, for being a mama's boy, I guess.

- Yeah, no, nothing wrong with that.

My son, he's mama's boy.

I'm not gonna lie, little guy is.

He's loved, he loves soccer too.

He's still coming up.

He's still got a little ways to go.

But A.J.

has a facility here in the Charlotte area in Pineville.

He's done a lot with the community as far as getting soccer, kind of getting the message out there about the community of soccer and helping the kids in the community get into soccer with your training facility in Pineville.

What's that like when you've got an area like Charlotte that obviously is a heavy football, basketball town?

We've had the MLS team for about five years now, but it seems to me when I go out on the weekends, like soccer is the growing sport.

- Yeah, yeah, we saw it just recently with the World Cup, right?

- [Tim] Yeah.

- The 48 nations and all the support from all the different countries that play in the World Cup.

And there's a hotbed of soccer talent here.

So just trying to tap into that a little bit.

- I think Charlotte is a soccer city.

I'm gonna go ahead and say that for all my friends out there.

And I'm not gonna lie, watching the World Cup, I even said it to my wife.

I was like, this is cooler than watching the Olympics every four years.

I'm looking forward to the next the next World Cup.

- [A.J.]

Yeah.

- All right, let me go ahead and grab our steak.

What we've got here is I've already kind of trimmed it up and got some of the fat off of that and some of the silver skin, but we've got just a, you know, skirt steak, inside skirt steak.

This is great for fajitas, for tacos.

Once again, it's not the most tender cut of meat out of the package, but we're gonna put it in a marinade.

And the important thing we want to know about a marinade too is especially marinating beef, when you're using citrus in your marinade, citrus is an acid.

The reason we add that is it's going to tenderize the meat take apart some of the, you know, just the connectivity tissue that's holding the muscle together.

What you don't want to do is to marinate it overnight if you're using acid.

Now there's plenty of other marinades like you were telling me earlier, like a soy sauce or like a Worcestershire, using even a hoisin or something like that if you're doing something Asian style.

By all means, marinate it overnight and it's fine, right?

- Yeah.

- But if you're using the citrus, it's gonna make your meat very mushy.

I like to think of like, I tell people it's like a ceviche.

It's, you're cooking the shrimp or the seafood in the citrus juices and that'll happen.

So I'm gonna go ahead and put this in here.

I'm just gonna lay it in there like that.

I'm gonna add a little bit of olive oil because that helps out as well.

(upbeat music) And then we're gonna go ahead and seal this up.

Shake it around a little bit.

Get the air out of it.

So what now, A.J., as you were growing up, like what was your match day?

Did you have a routine before you hit the field?

Like what you had for breakfast or for lunch that day?

Keep it light?

Or did you like try to, like you said, carb load?

- Yeah, when I was a kid I had zero routine.

(Tim laughing) But as a professional, yes, very strict routine.

And before games I would always have chicken Parmesan over penne pasta.

You get the carbs, you get the protein.

I don't really like vegetables, but I guess I have to throw those in there too.

I, you know, almost a habit, right?

- Yeah.

- You have something that works one time and you keep on repeating it all over.

- No, that's, hey, it's only weird if it doesn't work, right?

- Yeah, exactly.

- I'm gonna go ahead and put this in the fridge and let that cool down.

So we're gonna get into working some of our vegetables and stuff here.

We're gonna go ahead and get this done.

I'll let you go ahead and start with that.

I'll get the, with the peppers and I'll get the onion going.

Now what we want to do is we want to just go ahead, I've got my little grill basket here.

This is great for grilling vegetables on there.

And since we're going with fajitas, we want to kind of do it into thin strips.

So the easiest way I like to do this is cut the top off and then go ahead and cut the bottom off.

We can save those on the side here.

We'll slice those up and put those in there.

And then just kind of go in and cut out the seeds.

Out of all the vegetables they've made seedless, when are they gonna make bell pepper seedless?

Because it is so difficult to get these out without getting, okay, of course I got it all out in the first try there.

But get them out without getting them everywhere.

- I'm better with my feet than I am with my hands.

(Tim laughing) So give me a second.

- Take your time, take your time.

Yep, that's good right there.

Good deal.

And then yeah, I like to cut it in half.

Cut it down on the other side.

And then just yeah, just make slices down there as much as you want to.

We kind of want to keep them thin, but not too thin.

And these are gonna pick up a lot of the flavor that's gonna make our fajitas the deal.

Now when it comes to fajitas, do you like corn tortillas or flour tortillas?

- I like flour.

- All right, me too.

I got both, but I didn't know and I didn't want to upset anybody so I got you.

I got you both.

We'll go ahead and put those in there when they're done.

Getting kids to eat vegetables is really hard.

I find that the easiest way to get my kids to eat vegetables is to have them mixed in with something else.

Like a good pasta with a sauce or things like that.

But if you just throw some vegetables, especially my son, he's the youngest one.

My daughter, she's coming around.

She doesn't mind it so much and she's starting to stretch her legs and try different things and she's kind of getting on the bandwagon more of like, I want to have what you and Mom are having now.

So that's really cool.

It's, I don't know.

And I think you have to find a vegetable that your kids like, but then I feel like I exploit that vegetable.

And then they grow tired of it.

- [A.J.]

Yeah.

- What do you do?

You've got girls.

What do you do to get your, help your kids get some vegetables and understand the importance of getting a good well-rounded and healthy meal?

- Yeah, we try and throw in some different sauces to it as well, right?

- [Tim] Yeah.

- If we're gonna use asparagus like we did last night, we'll throw some cheese on there and some spices and make it fun as well.

- [Tim] Yeah.

- So we don't force it on them, but we make sure they at least try it and if they don't like it, then at least you tried.

- Yeah, well that, we have the same policy.

You have to try everything at least once.

But what is your kids' favorite?

- I don't know if they have a favorite vegetable.

(A.J.

laughing) - [Tim] What's their favorite meal then?

- If I have to say one, it'd probably be some broccoli.

- [Tim] Okay.

- I think that one's always a win, especially when it's maybe in the air fryer or.

- [Tim] I'll have to try that.

- Yeah, or off the stove.

- Okay.

Now I do not have a problem getting my kids to eat fruits, which I feel very fortunate about.

But yeah, trying to get them to understand some vegetables is, and enjoy vegetables, it's tough.

And I think it's just a phase that most smaller kids go through and then they grow out of it.

I used to hate vegetables, I love Brussels sprouts now.

I don't know why.

Kind of, I think I got it from "Sesame Street", my man Ernie.

That's his favorite vegetable if I remember right.

- You can make everything taste good.

- Yeah.

(Tim laughing) All right, I'm gonna go ahead and chop up these onions for us real quick here.

Just get a couple.

(knife chopping) - [A.J.]

You do that so much quicker than me.

- And I'm not even doing it that quick.

My knife skills are okay.

But hey, it's all about taking it at your own pace.

We're dads, we're cook.

We're not trying, we're not chefs.

We're just trying to make some good and healthy meals for the fam.

Take your time at it and do what you feel comfortable with and do what you like.

But you know, kind of like on the pitch, I guess practice makes perfect, right?

The more you do it, the easier it goes.

All right, we've got these diced up.

We're gonna go ahead and start off.

I'm gonna put a little bit of oil on the top of those.

I'm gonna go ahead and just put them on the grill.

Now with this grill grate, makes it really easy because they don't fall between the grill grate.

Great, I love it.

We're gonna put them over direct heat.

Go ahead and put some oil on there as well as a little salt and pepper.

(upbeat music) I'm even gonna put a little bit of the oregano that we put in the marinade on there.

Let me grab some tongs out here.

Go ahead and just get that stirred up a little bit.

Get those all over.

All right, as we're letting those go, I mean, I know I feel like I'm beating you up here, but like tell us a little bit more about your opinion on like soccer.

But what's things that they could take from the pitch to, I don't know, just everyday life?

Whether it's the classroom or just, you know, I don't know, what can they learn out there that can help them grow?

- Yeah, there's so many transferable skills, right, that these kids can learn and take to whatever profession that they do next, whether it be being a pro soccer player or they're all gonna be a pro at something else.

So there's things like communication and leadership and accountability that is priceless, especially at this young age for them.

So I think that's why sports in general is so important for our young players.

- No, that's great.

Now is there, how young is too young to get into sports?

- I don't think there's a too young of an age.

I think there is too young of an age to take it too serious though.

- [Tim] Okay.

- So I think there's a fine line.

- You got to have fun at it.

- Yeah, you got to make sure it's fun.

And that's honestly why I started my own training company is to make it fun for the kids.

- Well, I'm just cutting up these limes to use them as a garnish when we're done.

Little lime, little citrus on the beef always tastes really good.

So we're just gonna set those right over there and use those to go on there.

So I also have a dessert planned for us.

Do you like pineapple at all?

- It's my favorite fruit.

- [Tim] Have you ever had it grilled?

- I have not had it grilled and I will not eat it on pizza either, so.

- Okay, well, I'll give you one of the two of those.

- Right?

- Okay.

- What we're gonna do is we're gonna grill some pineapple when this is done.

Little bit of cinnamon, little bit of brown sugar on there.

And then just grill it just enough to heat it up and crystallize the sugar, caramelize the sugar a little bit.

And then we'll go ahead and top it off with some homemade vanilla ice cream.

I shouldn't say homemade vanilla ice cream.

I didn't make it.

Home style vanilla ice cream that we got at the store.

- I love a classic vanilla.

- [Tim] Yep.

- With sprinkles though.

- Oh, with sprinkles.

- With sprinkles.

- I think I can dig up some sprinkles for you, I got kids.

They love some sprinkles.

- [A.J.]

Yeah?

- All right, we're gonna get these going.

Now, when we're doing these vegetables, we don't want them to go too long to where they're just soggy and they're all over the place.

We like them to have just a little bit of a crunch here.

During your career in soccer, what are some things you're really proud of?

- I think just never giving up on myself.

- [Tim] Okay.

- I think as a young athlete, you have friends, even sometimes family that doubt your abilities.

I was always the one that just believed in myself and I had a dream and I made it come true, so.

- [Tim] That's awesome.

- Yeah, now I'm looking forward to doing my second dream and that was opening up this facility and reaching those kids.

When I was four years old and started playing soccer, trying to reach those four-year-olds now and give them somebody to look up to who's kind of gone through their pathway.

- So how old are the kids?

What the age range that you'll train from?

From four to?

- Yeah, with our outdoor expansion, we'll be looking at four years old.

- [Tim] Awesome.

- And up, all the way up to the professionals that we train indoors.

- The Carolina Ascent, I know you do a lot of work with them as well and everything.

And that's, you know, women's soccer, bringing that to Charlotte was also really cool.

Okay, let's get this, we'll get these cutting boards out of the way here and we'll move over to our pineapple.

So pineapple's your favorite.

So you know how to cut a pineapple?

- No.

- Okay, okay.

All right.

(A.J.

laughing) - But I bet you can teach me.

- I'm gonna do that.

- All right.

- I'm gonna do that.

That's what we do here on the show.

We teach a couple things.

So easy way, I just always cut the top off.

- [A.J.]

Oh, I can do that part.

- [Tim] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- [A.J.]

I know that.

- [Tim] Put that over there, that's for you.

- [A.J.]

Yep.

- [Tim] And we'll cut the bottom part off.

Now we're gonna make these into planks.

So, oh, this one's nice, this one's good.

Good and ripe.

- Where's that trick where you just pull it out and?

- I don't know.

I've heard about that, but you can just like push one of these and pull it out.

But I didn't research that before the show.

That's for the TikTok show.

I just like to cut these off, make sure we get all those pieces right there.

- [A.J.]

So I've been doing it right.

- [Tim] Yeah, man.

- [A.J.]

So Far.

- [Tim] There's only like so many ways that you can do that.

- [A.J.]

Lots of YouTube videos.

(Tim laughing) - What brought you to the Charlotte area?

Do you have family in the Charlotte area?

Excuse me, for my reach.

- No, you're good.

- Or you just kind of like the areas, noticed that it was kind of, you know, up and coming, growing, and this is kind of where you wanted to be?

I know you're from the East Coast, so.

- Yeah.

- [Tim] Was it just a cool place?

- Yeah, I grew up in Maryland, but I obviously played in LA and Houston and Miami and in Boston and we just thought, my wife and I just thought the Carolinas would be a cool place to settle down.

I was actually here when Charlotte FC won their first ever game.

- [Tim] Okay.

- I was on the other team.

(Tim laughing) So you're welcome for that.

And it just left a really cool impression on me, the atmosphere.

So I was like, let's give it a shot.

- [Tim] No.

- So we've loved it here so far.

- I like, that's one of the things I like about Charlotte.

Always growing, always expanding.

And it's just like a, really like a great big melting pot of just, you know, all kinds of people.

Lots of cuisine and everything too, so that's gonna come out.

All right, I'm going to cut these.

We're gonna do these in planks.

So I'm gonna cut around the core.

(knife chopping) And then I'm gonna cut on the side of the core here.

Whoopsies.

(knife chopping) And we'll get rid of the core.

And we'll leave these pieces here.

And we're gonna just kind of get them to planks.

I'm gonna go a little bit thinner than that there.

So that way, yep, we don't need a whole bunch.

A.J., your kids, getting them into sports, do they like soccer as well?

- I'm trying to get them.

- I mean, they have to, right?

- Yeah, I'm trying to get them into it, but I also don't want to be the soccer dad who pushed their kids.

So let them kind of go at their own pace.

They all love dance, they're all very good at it.

- [Tim] Okay.

- So enjoying that at the moment.

- My daughter did dance as well and gymnastics and those are all kind of falling to the wayside of her, you know, going forward with soccer and everything.

She seems to enjoy it.

But they're doing great, but it's really kind of like, I try to just be on the sideline and just cheer.

I don't try to coach from the sideline, because A, I kind of don't really know all that I'm talking about.

And I don't want to confuse them, but I want them to find their own path.

I don't want them to think that they're doing soccer because I want them to do soccer.

So I always think that's really important with kids in sports as well, is like kind of let them blaze their own way and be there just to support them and be there.

I tell them all the time, I'm your number one cheerleader.

- Yeah.

- I cheer.

My favorite thing is my daughter, she knows it's me because I say two things to her.

When I need her to start getting tough, getting a little more aggressive, I say, do work.

Do work, it's time to do work.

And if she does something great, but she may have missed, I just tell her, I say, do it again.

And she'll tell you, she hears me all the time.

So I yell, do it again.

- [A.J.]

We need more.

- She's like, why, I missed?

I'm like, you weren't that far away though, do it again.

- We need more parents with that mentality.

- All right, let's see what we've got with the peppers here.

Go ahead and get these bad boys.

Oh yeah, we're coming along nicely.

Now when it comes time, we want to get these going because when it comes time to the meat, we're only gonna do about four to five minutes on each side.

And then when we'll pull those off, we'll build our board.

And then while we're building the board, we'll let these, we'll let the pineapples go ahead and do their jam and then we'll be good to go.

But yeah, we don't have much longer on these.

I'm actually gonna move this to the side here and I'm gonna go ahead and get our beef out and go ahead and put that on there.

(logo whooshing) So we've been marinating.

You can see it's kind of already changed the color a little bit.

I'll go ahead and take it out so we can see.

We're gonna leave all this juice on there.

Typically also when I'm marinating, what I like to do is if it's been in the fridge for a couple hours, I like to let it out and let it sit on the counter for about a half an hour.

I don't want it to get room temperature, but I definitely want to take some of that chill off of it.

That'll also kind of just help it cook a little more evenly.

So we're gonna take this out.

It's got all the garlic and everything on it.

We're just gonna put it.

(grill sizzling) Right over the heat.

We're just gonna let it sit right there.

Another important thing that I like to do is I like to rest my meat.

When you're cooking meat, proteins of any kind, there's a lot of residual heat that it's gonna hold.

The heat from the meat is still gonna continue to cook it just a little bit through.

So I got a rack over there for resting.

We'll go ahead and set these just to the side here.

- [A.J.]

How long do you usually let it rest?

- I go for about 10 minutes because you also don't want it to get cold.

Now if it's a larger cut of meat, what I'll do is I'll rest it and I'll cover it in foil so that it keeps some of the heat and everything in there.

So I've been coaching the audience and you a little bit here in the kitchen or the outdoor kitchen here, the grilling techniques and the important things to know about marinades.

What are some of the things that you may feel makes you a good coach?

What are some of the things you're, the tips and tricks you have as a coach?

- Yeah, I think just like you're in here coaching us on how to cook, my past and my upbringing was soccer.

- [Tim] Yeah.

- So it's how can I use my experiences to pass them down to the youth players that are looking to follow on that journey and that path that I did?

But I think I'm just very patient with kids.

Not trying to be too hard on them.

Trying to make it fun, like I mentioned, and just being a positive role model in their life.

- All right, let's see how our steak's doing over here.

All right, coming right along.

(grill sizzling) Oh yeah, we're getting that nice color on there.

I'm gonna go ahead and pull these vegetables because I don't want them to go for too long.

Let me get my tray over here.

- How can you tell when vegetables are done?

- Well, I like them when they're kind of like this.

Like they're kind of translucent.

There's a little bit of char on there.

The onions are kind of turning yellow.

It's not that bright green.

But see, I'm gonna pick this one up.

It's still a little firm.

It's not sloppy, but it's still firm.

And when you bite it, it's still got that crunch to it.

It's not a full fresh crunch, but it's a little, it's got texture and it's got a firmness in your mouth.

(logo whooshing) Now, what we're gonna do, we've got some tortillas, I've got some corn too, we've got some cilantro for a garnish.

What I've got here is a little mix I put together.

All it is, is cinnamon and brown sugar.

I use a light brown sugar and we're just gonna sprinkle this over the top.

You can put as little or as much as you like on there.

Make sure they're good and covered.

Oh, you can smell that cinnamon coming off of there.

And I'm telling you, you're gonna be in for a treat.

- It smells like a dessert now.

- It's gonna be, it's like, it's almost like a pineapple churro.

Not really.

(both laughing) - [A.J.]

Can you just eat this like this or?

- [Tim] I mean, you could if you want to, there ain't nothing wrong with that.

It's fresh pineapple.

- [A.J.]

Just different ways to give this to my kids.

- Yeah.

My kids if you put, if you like kind of candy anything, there was a point in time I had my daughter believing that bacon, we called bacon meat candy so that she would try that.

But yeah, she's, like I said, she's growing up now.

She's coming along.

The little guy's the one that I still have to like argue with sometimes about eating his vegetables and gotta eat your vegetable.

I did yesterday.

You're like, well, you got to eat them every day.

But I use, I'm not gonna lie, I use people like you.

I'm like, hey, don't you want to be big and fast like A.J.?

Don't you want to be a great goalie like Kahlina, don't you?

I bet he eats his vegetables.

So yeah, the things we do to trick our kids into eating vegetables.

But I mean, that's all part of being a dad, right?

- [A.J.]

There you go.

- It's all part of being a dad.

All right, I'm gonna go ahead and pull the beef.

We'll go ahead and put that on the tray and let it rest for just a moment here.

(grill sizzling) That's perfect, nice.

Whoops, nice, juicy.

Probably a good medium on there.

Set that right there.

And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna go ahead and put our pineapple on here.

We're just gonna put it right on there, right across the grill grates.

Just enough to caramelize the sugar and warm it up a little bit.

But since we've been going, rolling that strong with our coals kind of going down, we can leave this on there a little longer than we normally would if we had a roaring fire.

And they're gonna be just fine while we go ahead and build our board together.

And I'm gonna go ahead and just close those off and keep some of the, much of the heat in there as possible.

Okay, so we talked about going with the grain.

So when we say looking for the grain in a meat, so this is what we're looking for.

Almost like wood, right?

It's got the grain, it's running that way.

That's the way the muscle is running.

We don't want to cut it along that way because that's the strongest part of it.

So when we cut against the grain, we're gonna cut it this way.

So basically just intersect that in lines and make little slices about that.

To make this a little more manageable, I am gonna cut it in half.

Oh yeah, look at that, that's good.

Nice and juicy now.

And then we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna cut really thin.

So here, while we're getting there, I'll give you a little taster.

- Wow.

- [Tim] Can you taste any of the citrus?

- Yeah.

- And then like I says, when you cut against the grain, I can even do a demo here.

You can pull it apart, it comes right apart.

Now if you were to cut it against the grain or with the grain, that same size piece.

- [A.J.]

Right.

- It's very hard to pull apart and it's gonna be very chewy.

So it's kind of cool how you can take that same piece of meat and it's all about how you slice it, literally.

So we'll go this way.

Oh yeah, little medium rare in the thick part there.

Now our tortillas, we're gonna go ahead and see if we can share the grill.

(lid clattering) You smell that when I open it?

- It's amazing.

- Oh man, that's delicious.

(grill sizzling) All right, so we're gonna make a little room.

I am gonna wipe a little bit of the grill off here because we had all the sticky cinnamon and sugar on there.

So I'm gonna wipe just a little bit of that off and that's what the section we're gonna use to warm our tortillas.

(lid clattering) So we're gonna have a couple of flour and a couple of corn tortillas.

Go ahead and put them on there.

We're just gonna let them get a little warm.

I'm gonna go ahead and get my cilantro.

I'm just gonna cut it up on the board here very thin.

(knife chopping) A little bit of our lime juice.

(upbeat music) And if I got anything left, a little bit of salt on top of there.

I love putting salt on my, salt is just a flavor enhancer.

It's not gonna make it all too salty.

It's a nice flavor enhancer, so here we go.

We've got our tortillas and here we have our game day fajita board.

You go first, sir.

- I'm gonna take the flour one.

- [Tim] That's all right, that's why I got them there.

I'm gonna do the same, I'm not gonna lie.

I like a good flour tortilla.

That's it.

(upbeat music) Oh, that's, it's hot.

I'm gonna have to look, might have to let that one rest for a second here.

(A.J.

laughing) - I thought we were gonna burn our mouths.

- Oh no, no, go ahead.

Let it cool off.

- Cheers.

- Cheers.

- Appreciate it.

(upbeat music) It's good.

- And that's pretty good.

(upbeat music) - Very good.

- Steak got a lot of flavor to it.

Like I says, I went for about a medium rare on this.

We could have gone a little bit longer if that's your flavor.

Do it a little harder, cook it a little hard.

The vegetables, the peppers and onions, great flavor.

Little bit of bite.

It's not like it's just you're covering it with the soggy stuff, but like, yeah, this is a, once again, this is a great board you can have when your friends are coming over.

You can just set it out.

Everybody can make their own, walk around, talk, watch a little footy, have a good time.

Mm.

(logo whooshing) Now we're gonna move on to dessert to close out the show.

Now, I know a lot of people are kind of weird about having warm fruit, grilled fruit they've never had before.

But like it's one of those things I think like, until you've tried it, you've gotta, you've gotta, you can't really say much.

So here, that's for you, sir.

Put a nice scoop of ice cream.

It's so hot, it's just sliding right off.

It's melting right off.

I'll take that one.

(birds chirping) Maybe on this one we'll put it side by side so that this ice cream doesn't immediately slide off of it.

See what that looks like.

And this is, like I said, just good old fashioned.

Yeah, that one looks better.

- Yeah.

- You take that one.

- Yeah.

- That one looks better.

- Cool, cool.

- And then so yeah, so just, I would take a little piece of the pineapple, a little bit of ice cream, cool it off.

I mean.

- Let's try it.

- It's really good.

Especially if you like pineapple.

I like pineapple, I like vanilla ice cream.

- Wow.

- You got the caramelization of the sugars.

Little bit of touch of cinnamon there.

I did do more sugar than I did actual cinnamon.

And then with the fruit and the ice cream?

I mean, even though it's warm, on a fall day like today, it goes down well.

So refreshing.

- It's my next tip for my kids.

(Tim laughing) - Make them eat some more fruit?

I gotcha.

All right, man.

Well, I'm gonna take one more bite here because I can't really put this down.

It's really delicious.

- I'm gonna take a couple more bites.

- You do that.

While AJ's enjoying the dessert, I'm gonna close out the show.

I want to thank everybody for tuning in.

Be sure to tune in next week where we're gonna have another wonderful dish, another wonderful guest, only on PBS Charlotte.

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