Black peppers and lost words

After some disappointingly small peppers ripened I was worried that the pepper crop would be a bust, but they have proved me wrong. They seem to go from flowers to peppers overnight and then keep growing. They are black rather than the advertised lilac-purple, but I find them pleasing.

Here is last night's crop, joined by some windfall green pear tomatoes. Small rain showers swept across the roof. Miniature fried green tomatoes are in my future. And in my past, a ratatouille, for supper last night. There was a summer squash, or striped zucchini, waiting for this lot down below, in the kitchen. The prospect of ratatouille did not thrill me, actually, so I was forced to add bits of pancetta and a fried slice of bread and a red wine reduction to jouge it up.

About that word. Jouge. I have never seen it spelled. Hence I cannot spell it. I have fed every conceivable spelling to Google, which keeps rolling its cyber eyes at me. In Cape Town I would say, This flower arrangement needs to be jouged up (jouge like rouge), meaning, it needs something to make it come to life, to sparkle, to sing. It might be accompanied by a flickering of the fingers...I thought it might be Yiddish. A lot of Yiddish made it into my childhood.

I have no idea where it comes from. I have not thought about it in years. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Is it in the Oxford Dictionary of South African English?