Charlotte Cooks
Tomato Pudding and Chermoula Shrimp Salad | Charlotte Cooks
Season 8 Episode 2 | 26m 28sVideo has Closed Captions
Guest Chef Oscar Johnson with Pamela Roberts make tomato pudding
Chef Oscar Johnson from Jimmy Pearls Eatery brings one of his family's favorite recipes to Charlotte Cooks. Chef Oscar and Chef Pamela prepare a delicious regional dish from the Tidewater region of Virginia called Tomato Pudding
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Charlotte Cooks is a local public television program presented by PBS Charlotte
Charlotte Cooks
Tomato Pudding and Chermoula Shrimp Salad | Charlotte Cooks
Season 8 Episode 2 | 26m 28sVideo has Closed Captions
Chef Oscar Johnson from Jimmy Pearls Eatery brings one of his family's favorite recipes to Charlotte Cooks. Chef Oscar and Chef Pamela prepare a delicious regional dish from the Tidewater region of Virginia called Tomato Pudding
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to this edition of "Charlotte Cooks".
I am so excited about today's show because we have a returning guest.
Chef Oscar Johnson is joining us from Jimmy Pearls.
Oscar, I'm so glad you come back today.
How are you?
- I'm doing great.
Thank you for having me back again.
Really glad to be here.
- I'm so happy you're here.
So, what are you gonna make for us today?
- So today, we are making a tomato pudding.
It is not very common.
A lot of people don't really hear a lot about it, which is a lot of the reason why I wanted to make it for you guys today.
- And you're gonna tell us about where you took this and got a crowd reaction from it.
- Oh yeah, for sure.
- And just while we're making it.
- Okay.
- And then you have another dish you're gonna make for us too.
What else are you gonna make?
- So, we're gonna make a Chermoula shrimp salad.
It's a North African relish marinade that is really great with grilled seafood and vegetables, something really refreshing for the summertime so- - Oh, that's great.
- gonna be awesome.
- So let's get started.
What are we gonna make first?
- All right, so we're gonna start with our tomato pudding.
- So, what do you need to make tomato pudding?
- We need some stewed tomatoes and then we have a combination of stewed and fresh just to kind of give it a real nice texture.
You want those fresh in-season tomatoes to kind of come through, but you can totally use these tomatoes year round.
- Now, does it matter if they're red or green or... - Yes, it does actually matter.
Different tomatoes have different levels of acidity, and the beautiful thing about this dish is that it starts off very acidic from the fresh tomatoes, but as you cook it down with the spices and the sugar and the fresh herbs and the butter, it just really mellows out and everything just plays real nicely.
And of course, with with green tomatoes and stuff like that, little bit better for frying, pickling, - Right.
Right.
- things like that.
- So, if you wanted to use yellow tomatoes, would it have the same appearance or, I mean obviously it would be different, but- - Yeah, - the flavor would be off a little, you think?
- That, I don't know.
I've only been familiar with using the vine-ripened tomatoes or either beef steak tomatoes, tomatoes that kind of have a nice, a little less on the firm side- - Okay.
- just because they're really good for stewing.
- Yeah.
Yeah.
- So we want to use those tomatoes that are really good for stewing, have a decent amount of sugar content too.
- Now, you can buy these tomatoes- - Yes.
- rather than having to make them, right?
- Yeah, for sure, but if you have the time, you can do a process where you concasse and you, which is you get your boiling water, you score the bottom and- - Right.
- you can peel 'em and dice 'em yourself.
You're more than welcome to do that.
- Most folks at home wanna open a can and dump it in- - And keep it rolling.
- and keep it simple, right?
- And that's southern cooking too.
I mean- - It is.
- there are some people who have done the concasse method and everything, but at your convenience, we wanna make this really easy for you.
- And you know there's a reason we have convenience, right?
- There we go.
- Let's use it.
- All right, let's do it.
- All right.
Okay, so what else do we need for tomato pudding?
- All right, so we got some onions.
These are some nice vidalia onions.
- Okay.
- Sweet, plays perfectly with this dish.
- Okay.
- This dish is gonna be sweet and savory.
- Okay.
- It can also be strictly sweet because tomatoes are a fruit and you can treat this like a fruit cobbler, and we'll see that as we start to get cooking.
So, you can add all different types of aromatics to it.
You can do garlic but we're not gonna do garlic.
We're just gonna focus on the onion, thyme, the tomato and just kind of building the flavors around the tomato.
And we got some warm spices, we got some clove and cinnamon here.
- [Pamela] Clove and cinnamon.
- Yep.
- Okay, these are already ground.
- Yep, those are already ground and we have some torn up sourdough bread.
- Sourdough?
Okay.
- You can use whatever you want.
You can use holah, you can use some of your nature's own bread that you have in the pantry that's leftover.
- Could you use the regular loaf sandwich bread you have?
- Yeah, for sure.
- And you can use brioche fancy bread?
- You can do fancy bread, you can take leftover biscuits, you can use any type of bread that is gonna soak up in the tomato stew.
- Okay.
- It'll work perfectly fine.
- Okay.
- Yep.
- And we got some brown sugar.
- Yep, and so this is pretty much it, and like I said, there are so many different ways that you can do this.
You can make it as sweet as you like.
Some recipes don't even call for you to cook the tomatoes right away, you can actually just mix all the tomatoes in a bowl with the sugar and everything, put it in the casserole dish with the bread- - Okay.
- and you'll be good to go.
- Okay.
- I'm gonna go ahead and cut half of an onion and get it nice and small dice.
- And you know, at home, if you guys really wanted to take a shortcut and not have to cut these things yourself, you can go with the salad bar in the grocery stores and your things already cut.
- Oh yeah, food processor.
- Absolutely.
- I use the food processor all the time, yep, and we'll just run our knife through it real good.
You know, we just wanna sweat these onions.
We don't wanna burn them.
- The "sweat", folks at home, means to cook 'em without browning, so that means your heat needs to be medium to medium low.
The whole thing about this sweat is to bring out the sugars and the juices of these onions.
So, you're just gonna start warming up your pan.
- I got my pan on medium heat.
We are just gonna melt our butter, and if I can get a wooden spoon- - Wooden spoon?
- or a spatula.
Yeah, one of them.
- Both.
- That'd be good.
- There you go.
- Yeah, this is the home cooking spoon right here.
- Absolutely.
I use wooden spoons a lot.
- Oh yeah.
- A lot.
They're my preferred cooking utensil nowadays.
- Mm-hmm.
- I mean, I go back and forth between lots of different things, but nowadays, I'm grabbing all my wooden stuff.
- That's it.
Yeah, one of my friends just gifted me a large wooden spoon from Ghana.
- Oh nice.
- Her husband's from Ghana and gifted me one and I still have yet to use it- - Yeah.
- but I gotta make a big pot of something to make it work.
- Yeah, there you go.
- So, we're just melting our butter here and while we wait on our butter, we're gonna go ahead and dice these beautiful vine ripened tomatoes.
- You don't have to skin or seed them?
- Not at all, not at all.
- All right.
- We've got the stew tomatoes here.
- I like this recipe more and more.
- Yep.
There we go, and we're just gonna remove this little top here.
We don't want those in the pudding, and these will just be rough chop because like I said, this is gonna cook down real nicely/ A little science lesson, tomatoes are angiosperms and that means that they have a seed on the inside of 'em.
So like I said, with this recipe throwing some people off and not really knowing what tomato pudding really is, is treated like fruit so don't stray away from it.
That's it.
- So Oscar, tell us about when you would make tomato pudding, 'cause you said you guys made it at different times?
- Yeah, so my mom, I asked her recently because I've had it so much throughout my childhood and adulthood and she would always tell me, or she told me that it was a special treat.
You know, we had some special guests coming over, it was holiday time.
We had just got done frying some chicken and some pork chops or some smoked meats, some beautiful sized lama beans and some of the southern classics, and so that's when we knew tomato pudding would be on the table, when we had special guests and family coming over.
So, it was just always one of those random dishes.
No one really announced when they were making it.
It would just end up on the table- - It showed up, yeah.
- and it was a treat.
Everyone knew it was a treat.
Yep, so we're going right in with our onions and like I said guys, we were sweating these onions.
We are not getting too crazy with them.
Yeah, this dish is super special.
This is what I like to do with my cooking, is just kind of experimenting and kind of bringing some of those older recipes back to the forefront, especially with the platform that I have now.
- Oh yeah, absolutely.
- It's very important to represent, you know, the roots of southern cooking in all different regions, especially Virginia.
- You know, we're masking secrets here.
This is how you make 'em.
Nothing is really difficult but it's so full of flavor because we're using good ingredients.
- [Oscar] That's it.
- [Pamela] Really good ingredients.
- Yep, and like I said, tomatoes, like I said, it's the best to use them when they're in season but for sure, if it's colder outside and you're trying to warm your belly, you can totally just do a hundred percent stew tomatoes, and if you do happen to find some good out-of-season tomatoes, feel free to use 'em.
In some hotter regions, the tomato season is shorter, but like I said, you get your hands on a really good tomato, nice juicy tomato that you can break down and cook into a beautiful stew like this.
This is great.
There's no true origin story that I found about tomato pudding just yet, but just pretty much coming from Freetown up to Birdie County, North Carolina, this was a dish that was served at diners and buffets and some people just got confused.
They were like, is it a dessert?
Is it a side?
But however you like to incorporate it into your meal, I feel like you should just kind of go with that.
Okay, so we got our onions sweating real nicely here.
We're gonna go ahead and go in with the fresh tomatoes, and you can cut these, not super large but you can kind of cut 'em anywhere between a small dice or like a medium or like chunks like this.
'cause if you like cobbler, like I like chunks of peach.
- Chunks of fruit, yeah.
Yeah.
- Yeah, chunks of apples, so I'm treating these tomatoes with love.
I'm treating them just like the apple and the more popular cobbler, you know, variations.
- Cobbler is a very, very quintessential southern dish.
- Yes it is.
So, we've got our stew tomatoes that we're gonna go ahead and with the pan with, and we're gonna go ahead and cook these in with the fresh tomatoes, the butter and the nicely sweated onions, and so this is where we're getting ready to start building our stew tomato, like our tomato stew.
- Yeah, the wonderful flavors.
Yep.
- Yep.
And so, we're just gonna crank it up just a little bit because we want to cook this water out and we want this to get, you know, pretty thick before it goes in the oven and before we add in the bread and the spices and everything like that.
So, in March we did wine and food in Charleston.
- Down in Charleston, yeah.
- Yep, so me and my partner... - I saw you were going down there.
I was wondering what you were gonna do.
- Oh yeah.
So... - What did you do?
- So we were at Peculiar Pig farm in Dorchester and we did a live fire cooking event.
- Nice.
- And people bought tickets and there was just all different types of charcuterie and live fire cooking.
We did a whole hog, we did some amazing sides.
We used some beautiful produce from some local farmers, and so we were pretty much all set with everything and we had some tomatoes laying around and we had some bread laying around, and so my friend Marvin Ross asked, he was like, "Hey, what would you like to make?
Would you like to make something else?"
And I was like, "Yeah, let's make tomato pudding."
So same question, what is tomato pudding?
- What is tomato pudding?
- I haven't heard that.
- Yeah.
- So, long story short, we made it and it didn't last very long and we actually had some people who sent me emails of their recipes that they tried at home.
- Oh, nice.
- So some people actually took it home and tried it.
- It's very nice.
- I wasn't expecting it.
- Isn't that fun?
- Yeah, it was great.
- I always like it when people write into me saying, "Hey, I tried your recipe from Charlotte Cooks."
I've actually had people send me pictures of what they've made before and it's just so much fun when people responding.
- So, we're gonna go ahead and let these do their thing.
I think we can start on our (indistinct) for our shrimp salad.
- Okay.
- So for this Chermoula, Chermoula is a North African relish or a marinade that is used in Tunisian cooking, Moroccan cooking, and the thing I love about it, I use it a lot and I know I have some friends that are gonna be watching this and they're gonna say, "Yeah, Oscar loves his Chermoula," I love it on raw oysters, chargrilled oysters.
I love to marinate my fish with it.
I love to put it on a grilled piece of protein, marinating vegetables, it just has a lot of flavor involved with it with spices and the citrus and the smokiness from the paprika that goes in it.
It's just so many exciting flavors associated with a Chermoula.
So, we're gonna do a nice chilled shrimp salad, something really refreshing for the summertime, and this is how we're gonna start building some flavor.
- Okay.
- So, we got some water going here.
I'm gonna add a little pinch of salt here.
- All right.
- And this is like a little junior version of a (indistinct).
You can throw white wine in this certainly, but we're just gonna throw some aromatics in there, just enough to season that shrimp and we're gonna go right in with it.
- And then at home, those people are wondering what are aromatics?
'Cause you hear chef talking all the time about using aromatics.
Carrots, onion, celery and that's pretty much aromatics, things that are gonna add flavor and beautiful aromas.
And you know, most cooks will start off with carrots, onions and celery for just about everything.
- Yep.
- And there's a reason.
- The fundamentals.
- Yep, there's a reason.
It's because it tastes good, it adds wonderful flavor and sweetness and complexity rather than just using plain old salted water.
- And I've got these vegetables cut up nice and small for a maximum extraction of flavor.
So, that's why we like to mince things, you know, so we like to get the the full bodied.
- And these aren't gonna be served, so it doesn't matter if just chopped up.
- Yeah, at home.
- They don't have to be uniform or anything.
- [Oscar] There we go.
- Okay.
- At home, if you're making a stock or a broth or something like that, you can still cut small pieces but they don't have to be neat or they don't have to be any kind of way.
You can leave your onions with the skin on 'cause it gives it a nice color.
You get all the nutrients from those vegetables.
So, we got some fresh thyme.
You can use whatever you have on hand.
You can use bay leaf, you can use oregano, you could just use any fresh herbs that you have at home.
So, we're gonna add a little salt to our tomatoes while we let that (indistinct) bouillon do its thing, and I like to season in layers.
- Mm-hmm.
- This is definitely essential, you know, especially like the way I like to cook, just layers of flavor even in a simple dish like this.
So, I was asked what makes this special?
And like I said, just most of the origins of southern cooking are low and slow- - Yeah.
- and you want to build those flavors.
So here... - Low and slow and fried in grease.
- That's it.
That's it.
Nothing wrong with it.
So, I got some cloves, I got about a quarter of a teaspoon in there and I'm gonna go right in with my cinnamon, and this is all to your liking too.
Of course, there's a little goes a long way, but if you're just crazy about cinnamon, why not?
- I love cinnamon.
- Yeah.
So check this out.
We've got almost a little bit of a stew going here.
It's thickening.
- Nice and thick.
- I believe tomatoes have pectin in them, correct?
- I'm sure they have some level of pectin in there.
- Yeah, so that's just the pectin.
There's no flour, there's no corn starch or anything in here.
This is just all the natural sugar is starting to cook out from the stew and the fresh tomatoes and the onions as well too.
So, we're gonna add some brown sugar.
You can use white sugar as well.
So, one last touch to our bouillon over here, we're just gonna throw in some fresh lemon.
- Yes, that's acid you're looking for.
- Oh yeah.
Lemon and seafood, we all know how we feel about that.
That definitely takes it to another level, gives it a nice little pop of flavor.
- Absolutely.
- We're gonna let that rock, we want that to reduce down just a little bit more, but not too much because we still want that bread to be able to soak up all that beautiful liquid in there.
- You don't want... - And like I said guys, it's gonna look like a cobbler and it's gonna be amazing, gonna be something that you definitely want to try.
So, we got our bouillon going here.
- And we got some ice water here.
- Yep, so we are gonna stop the cooking process.
We just want these shrimp to be nice and beautiful and pink, and then when the shrimp starts to kind of curl up, that's how you know it's done.
We're gonna just go in with the shrimp and notice I did not strain this but it is perfectly fine.
You can get some of the vegetables in there that'll go right in that salad, it is all good.
We don't waste anything so that'll be a nice touch.
- And how long will they take to cook?
- Anywhere between five to seven minutes.
- Okay.
- More on seven minute side.
Our shrimp are pretty much looking like they're ready to come out of this water.
So, we got all the time and everything it all there, just kind of sitting on it and we can kind of pick through it once we get it in the ice water.
And the great thing about this tomato pudding, we just got it rolling over there and it's totally fine because we're not cranking up the heat on it, and it doesn't bake long, it's only 20 minutes.
You just want the bread to crisp up, it's gonna soak up all that liquid and... - You looking for it to get bubbly and golden brown on top?
- That's it.
- Okay.
- Just like a fruit cobbler, it says that in the recipe.
So, when you guys get the recipe and you're trying to figure out what it's supposed to look like, bubbly cobbler.
- Okay.
- Just like peach blackberry.
Another talking point, we have the dumplings.
You can make dumplings like how you would do blackberry dumplings- - Right.
- or dumplings on top of an apple cobbler situation.
You can totally do that with the tomatoes as well.
- Very nice.
- So, that's just a great thing.
Like I said, I love talking about southern cooking because there's just so many different things.
Even though there are recipes, recipes are guidelines.
- Yes.
- So, you can literally just manipulate them however you want to- - Exactly.
- and just make it your own original thing.
- Understand your ingredients.
- Yep.
All right, so we've got our tomatoes looking really, really good.
I got a couple of thyme sprigs that we're going to add.
We're not gonna need a whole bunch.
And like I said, there are recipes where literally, you can just do all the sweet stuff.
- Yeah.
- You know, the cinnamon, the cloves, you could do the brown sugar.
Some recipes, some of the old school recipes have vanilla extract.
- Oh really?
- And they literally truly treat it like a cobbler.
So, this thyme is just gonna be finally chopped and we're just gonna add this in here just for that nice little floral component, and this thyme is just gonna tie everything together and this is what makes it, it brings that savory out along with the onion.
And this is a little bit, we don't need a whole lot of it.
This is some sourdough that I have from Duke's bread.
They are here locally here in Charlotte.
So, we've got some butter melted, so we're just gonna put some in our casserole dish to start off, and there's no right or wrong way to do it.
You can take the bread and you can mix it in a bowl if you want to.
You can toast the bread if you would like.
- Okay.
- But we are, since it's gonna get toasted anyway, we're gonna throw just a little bit in here, just a little bit on this bottom layer.
Just gonna work that in with the butter.
So, we are gonna take the rest of these, throw those in, start soaking up some of that.
I think I kind of do this a little bit different each time I make the recipe, just kind of how I feel.
- Just like grandma did.
- Yeah, just going with the mood and how I feel and how I want to go about it so.
- Exactly.
- So, we are gonna throw this in, give that a nice little stir.
And like I said, you don't wanna cook all that liquid out because you won't have... - Something for the bread.
- There you go, and look how beautiful that is.
You see the little leaves of thyme in there, give it a little bit of color.
- It's beautiful.
- And we're just gonna take these breadcrumbs or these torn pieces of bread, put that right over the top.
- So, you wanna have some of the bread chunks on the top.
- Mm-hmm, and a little bit more butter, and so the butter and the sugar and everything just, that's the part that people would say will make it a dessert.
- Ah.
- Because when you do this and you bake it, it just really, like I said, it bakes up like a nice fruit cobbler, and we're all set.
You can also sprinkle just a little bit more sugar on top to give it a nice crust if you would like, just kind of depends on how you wanna go about it.
- How sweet you want it.
- You want it, yeah, how sweet you want it.
You can just literally do that, but this is ready to go in the oven.
- Okay.
- [Oscar] 400 degrees, about 20 minutes.
- Okay.
- Good to go.
All right, so now into our Chermoula.
- Let's do our Chermoula.
- So, Chermoula is just consistent of toasted spices, some fresh herbs and a little bit of heat.
- And what spices are we using?
- So, we are using some smoked paprika, we've got some coriander, we've got some cumin and we've got some chili flakes.
So, we're gonna start with some curly leaf parsley, just grab a nice little handful, just kind of rip them all right off their stem, and we've got some cilantro.
So, we just gonna run our knife through here real nicely, probably about three or four times.
- And you said this is a North African dish?
- Yes.
- And it's a lot like the chimichurri sauce which you find in South American.
- Very, very similar.
Very, very similar.
It's just different ingredients and of course, like I said, the origins are a little bit, you know, different.
Like I said, you have different regions that are spread across.
In goes our bowl, and we are gonna go with our red chili flake.
You can turn the heat up on this thing if you want, but this is about half a teaspoon.
- Okay.
- And we're gonna go in with a little bit of the paprika.
It's like my favorite part of it.
I love working with paprika.
- Do you?
- Oh yeah.
This is the coriander which will kind of, you know, coriander is the seed of the cilantro- - Right.
- so definitely goes hand in hand.
- We're using a whole plant there.
- There we go.
And we got our cumin in, and so these are just the spices, so we're just gonna let that rush in that bowl while we get the rest of our knife work done.
So, I got a beautiful shallot that's gonna give this dish a nice little bite as well.
- They're quite strong in their flavors, aren't they?
- Yes, they are.
(person laughing) You just gotta be careful, just gotta know what you're doing.
- Yes.
- Yep, so we're gonna get this a real nice mince.
I've even thrown ginger in this before.
- Oh really?
- I love ginger.
I use ginger a lot.
Ginger definitely gives it a real nice kick to it as well.
And we've got our shallots ready to go, and then next, we're gonna go ahead and start zesting our citrus- - Okay.
- and juicing our citrus.
So, we're gonna go in with our lime.
Use as much as you like.
I like a lot of lime, especially in my guacamole, - Yeah.
- different things like that.
- Yeah.
- I really like that lime flavor.
- Yeah.
You know, lime and lemon, you think that they're being citrus and they're interchangeable but seriously, there are some dishes you just don't want lime on- - Mm-hmm.
- and there are some dishes you don't want lemon on.
- Yep.
So, I'm just gonna cut these in half and we're gonna go in with the juice, and we got some red wine vinegar and it's not a lot of red wine vinegar.
I just really like to use that as an extra layer of acidity.
- It's a different kind of acid.
- Yes, and this is infused.
This is a special red wine that I've had.
- Did you make it?
- Yes.
- Oh wow, good.
- Yes.
This is a really good red wine.
And lastly, I almost forgot about our garlic.
So, it's just gonna take about two cloves.
I'm gonna smash it down, and garlic is gonna give it a real nice mild punch in there as well.
This is a good sharp knife so we didn't have to mince that garlic for too, too long.
So, I'm gonna bring this over here.
I'm gonna bring that bowl to us, and then lastly, just to make this more of a salad, we're gonna dice some cucumbers.
And so since we've already used some tomato, I've left the tomatoes out of this but you can certainly do some cherry tomatoes, some real nice heirloom tomatoes, dice those in there as well, and we'll gonna go ahead in with our oil.
So, we're just gonna add just enough to make this a real nice sauce, sauce, relish.
- So, you're not gonna add all that oil?
- Mm-mm, they're not gonna add all of it.
You don't want it to be too oily.
- Now, what kind of oil are you using?
- So, this is some extra virgin olive oil.
- Okay.
- You can also use a lighter weight oil.
- Could you use like a regular salad oil or vegetable oil?
- Totally, totally.
- Okay.
It just won't have any oil flavors that... - There you go.
- Because remember, your oils will impart flavors and so if you've got a nice strongly flavored oil, you're gonna have that flavor in your marinade.
So, if you don't want that, you choose a neutral oil.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- So, this is good.
This is gonna be just enough to cover the shrimp.
Got that working in there.
You see how the paprika kind of comes through and the chili flake.
We're just gonna do a real nice dice on the cucumber, and you can cut these cucumbers however you want.
If you want to do half-moons, I'm just gonna dice these today.
So lastly, we're just gonna finish this with some salt and we're gonna toss in our shrimp.
And you can cut this shrimp up, you can split it in half.
I like to do it whole 'cause I love shrimp.
- Yeah.
- So, I'ma just throw those in whole, and we're just gonna give this a nice little toss.
- Oh, look at that.
Now, that would be superb if we let that marinade for a while too, right?
- Yes, yes.
So in the recipe, you can literally, you can serve this immediately, but I recommend allowing this to chill for at least 30 minutes to an hour or overnight.
- Yeah.
- Overnight's even better.
You know the old saying, you let something stay overnight, even if you're reheating something the next day, the spaghetti tastes better the next day.
- Oh, doesn't it though?
- But yeah, but this shrimp salad is perfect.
We're gonna go straight to plating.
Look how beautiful that is.
- It is gorgeous, and you're using a slotted spoon so you don't get a whole lot of marinade in there so it's not gonna swim in the serving bowl.
- There you go.
- It's just gonna be a nice coating.
Oh, that's beautiful.
- Beautiful portion there.
- That's beautiful.
And then let's talk about tomato pudding.
- All right.
And we've got our beautiful tomato pudding, and this is one that I have previously assembled for you guys, letting it kind of marinate for a little bit.
And here's the finished product, literally looks like a cobbler.
and I think we're ready to serve it up on a plate, Chef.
- Spoon that baby up.
Yes sir.
- All right, lets go.
All right, so you get a nice little corner.
We like the corners.
Look at that.
- Everybody loves the corners.
- That is beautiful.
Oh my goodness, look at that.
- And look how it just comes together with all that bread.
The bread is such a crucial... - Oh, it's beautiful.
Let me get a little bit more on there for you.
There you go.
- It's beautiful and it smells divine.
- Yep, and that's it.
That's tomato pudding.
- Wow.
- And like I said, guys, this goes great with fried foods if you like, you know, with fried chicken, a nice little Sunday supper.
- Mm-hmm, oh yeah.
- A great side dish to go or like I said, this could be dessert.
Scoop some ice cream on top, minus the onions and everything else, but if you have a different recipe that doesn't have the onions and everything, ice cream goes great.
Onion ice cream, hey, that might be on another episode.
You might have to try that.
(people laughing) - Alrighty, people.
Oscar, thank you for being here.
- No problem.
Thanks for having me.
- Here is the tomato pudding.
- Always a pleasure.
- And this is a beautiful North African dish.
Anything you put on your table featuring these dishes is sure to bring the crowds running.
Pleasure.
- Pleasure.
- It's always fun to have you here on the show, and thank you for sharing these recipes with us because these recipes have heritage.
- Yes, they do.
Totally.
That's what I'm all about.
- We really like it, and you're over in 7th Street right now, aren't you?
- Yes.
So, Jimmy Pearl's is located at the 7th Street public market, 224 East 7th Street.
- Okay.
- We are specializing in fish, oysters and pork.
- Okay.
- Our Uncle Jean's fish sandwich is a crowd favorite.
- Yep.
- We're open six days a week, and so you can find us on Instagram and, you know, we have our staple menu items but you'll be surprised.
We have a sweet potato bread pudding for dessert.
- Oh wow, great.
- So, if you guys want to come by, come check us out.
- Okay.
- Definitely appreciate it.
- Great.
Thank you very much.
If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.
Send me an email at pamela.roberts@cpcc.edu.
You can watch this show and past episodes on PBS Charlotte Passport or subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Coming up on the next episode of Charlotte Cooks, I wanna ask you, what does Shakespeare, Medieval England and the Gulf Coast all have in common?
Is it a drink?
Is it a pudding?
See how this dish has evolved and I'll show you on the next episode.
Thank you for watching this episode of "Charlotte Cooks".
(upbeat music) - [Voiceover 1] A production of PBS Charlotte.
Tomato Pudding & Chermoula Shrimp Salad
Preview: S8 Ep2 | 53s | Chef Oscar Johnson with Pamela Roberts make a unique dish from the Virginia Tidewater area (53s)
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