Oscar Johnson and Darryl Cooper draw inspiration for their seafood recipes from family traditions, African-American culinary history, and global ingredients.

They are known for creating new taste memories by putting their fresh spin on time-honored dishes.

[jazzy music] So, Oscar, Coop, I've been waiting on this for so long.

Ever since I met you guys at a seafood event a couple of years ago, like I have got to bring them over and cook together.

And today is the day.

- Today's the day.

- Tell me what we're making.

- Well today we're making our variation of an Asian dish called the chili crab.

Out of blue crab and we're making our sauce out of a West African inspired tomato based sauce that's also spicy with a lot of chilies and a specific ingredient called dawa dawa.

- All right, so we got some boiling water, crabs in a bucket or a bowl.

This is just a real quick cook.

Nothing more than five minutes, just until those shells get nice and pink or red.

And then we'll be ready to shock 'em in some ice water to stop the cooking process.

- Okay, and that's why we've got our ice water here.

So what do you think?

Let's take a look.

- Let's take a look at 'em.

- Bright red.

- Beautiful.

We are gonna stop this cooking process immediately.

- And you know, that whole cooking and the magic of ice water stops that cooking instantly.

'cause you're gonna cook these again, right, so you don't wanna overdo it at this point.

So they're gonna chill and then we're gonna get ready and you're gonna show me how to clean 'em, right?

- Yep, we're gonna show you how to bust 'em down.

- All right.

[cheerful music] We have before us our four cooked crabs and you're gonna show me how to break these apart, right?

- Mhnm.

- I've never done this.

I'm so curious.

Where do we begin?

- All right, I'm gonna take one of these beautiful crabs right here.

What I like to do is I like to take this piece with the point.

- Are you kidding me?

- Right here, yep.

you got the point right here.

- Yes.

- Slide it on down.

- Look how easy that is.

- See how easy that is?

- I'll be darned.

- Take that off, right, take your thumb, or whatever dominant hand you are, slide it right on the top.

- All right.

- Hear that crunch?

- All right.

- And pull up.

- [Sheri] Well, would you look at that?

- Now, we're gonna save the shells.

We're also gonna save- - Save the shells and.

- Then save whatever juice is in there.

If there's a gill that falls off in there, you can take that, throw that away.

- We don't want that part, but we want those shells 'cause shells have flavor, right?

- Then from here, usually I just crack this in half, just like this.

That's it, yeah, easier to work.

- All right, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna do the rest of these and then onto the spice mix.

- Yep.

Chili paste.

- Okay.

Chili paste.

- Let's do it.

- All right, let's get busy.

[cheerful music] So this is gonna be the chili paste that gives the chili to the chili crab, right?

- Mm-hmm.

- Yes ma'am.

- All right, I see some things I recognize, I see some things I don't.

Tell me what we're putting in this food processor.

- So we've got some rehydrated guajillo chilies.

So we just simply just put those in some warm water to soak.

- And that's a really mild heat, almost a fruity heat.

This one I recognize.

- Yep, those are scallops, and you can certainly use yellow onion for this as well.

You got some minced garlic.

- All right, good, fresh garlic.

And then ginger?

- Yep, you got some ginger.

- [Sheri] And then what is this?

- [Oscar] You got scotch bonnet pepper.

- Ooh, now that's where some heat's coming from in this, right?

Now this one, friends, what do we have here?

- So we have dawa dawa, AKA fermented locust bean.

- Fermented locust bean.

- Locust bean seed.

- And then this, we're gonna put the lid on here and we're just gonna process this until it's a smooth paste.

- Yep.

Beautiful.

- [Sheri] There is nothing but flavor in there.

- [Daryl] Oh yeah.

- All right, looks like next stage we're gonna take that wonderful paste we just made and make a sauce.

- So we're gonna start with our fermented or our shrimp paste.

- And you're going to put it in the pan and just re bloom it?

What are we doing here?

- So we're just gonna toast it a little bit.

So like I said, we're just building a little fine here.

And then we'll add the palm oil in next.

- Palm oil.

Okay.

Palm oil.

May I put that in there for you?

- Yep, that'd be perfect.

- Okay.

- Whoo, got it going now.

- Oh yeah.

- [Sheri] What goes next, friend?

- So we'll go in with the chili paste that we have created.

- Oh, and this is the thing we just made.

- Yep.

- All right.

- And so we're cooking with some high heat.

We got this wok here, so we're doing a little bit of Afro Chesapeake cuisine right now.

Because this next ingredient, we're gonna throw in some beer to kind of deglaze the situation.

Going back to how we like to cook those crabs and do the crab boils and having that cheap beer that we talked about.

- Yeah, it's the nice trashy beer that goes well with crabs but you don't want it, that you drink just to get you there.

- So what that's doing, it looks to me, is that sizzling, we're almost deglazing.

- Mm-hmm.

- All right.

Look at that, that is really, really building up.

- Well next we are gonna go in with our tomato puree.

All right, and lastly we're gonna do our chili sauce.

So we're gonna go ahead with our water.

- All of this?

- We'll use about half of that.

- [Sheri] So you are adding enough more liquid to give just some volume for our crab, right?

- Yep.

That's it.

- Okay.

- [Oscar] And this next part is the best part.

- And I love that you're adding the shells.

'cause like we said, shells have flavor.

- Yep, so I'm gonna go ahead with all these crabs.

- They just all go in at once.

- All go in at once.

Don't be shy.

- And now I can see why you're using a wok, that high heat, room for all this to go in.

- So we want to just get a good little stir so we get all of this coated and then we're just gonna let it simmer for a little bit, just so we get all that flavor into those shells.

Because you do eat this dish with your hands.

So we're gonna finish our sauce here with a little acid.

So we got some rice wine vinegar.

And then we're gonna just let that continue to let that cook out a little bit.

And I'm gonna pass this right over to your, partner.

- Come on down.

- Can you reach?

- Yep.

- [Sheri] So this is when all those solids come out, right?

- Yes, ma'am, everything that's crab come out.

- And so look at those shells, how pretty they are.

We've stuck with a theme here, haven't we?

- [Daryl] We're so saucy.

- [Oscar] All right, we're gonna put this back on the heat and we're just gonna add our egg.

And we have one beaten egg here.

And this is just the thickener, like this is just to kind of bring everything together, give it the body that we're looking for.

- And look at that, smooth as silk.

- Yep, and we are just gonna pour it right on over.

Look at that, it's like a gravy almost.

- It looks like the most beautiful, delicious, well flavored tomato gravy I have ever seen.

- [Daryl] So we have cilantro and you have green onions, a little garnish at the end.

- Oh, this is an amazing, amazing, beautiful dish.

And I have learned so much.

- Thank you so much for having us.

[cheerful music] [upbeat music]