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Doubles

The most beloved street food in Trinidad & Tobago. Two soft fried baras, a scoop of curried channa, and as much pepper as you can handle.

credit

recipe and technique from Cooking with Ria. go watch it.

the founders

Emamool and Rasulan Deen, inventors of doubles
Emamool "Mamoo" Deen & Rasulan Deen, the originators.

Doubles was invented in 1936 in Princes Town, in southern Trinidad, by Emamool "Mamoo" Deen and his wife Rasulan. Mamoo started out selling curried channa wrapped in a single fried bara as a quick, cheap working-man's meal. The story goes that a regular customer kept asking him for "double" the bara to soak up more channa, and the nickname stuck. Within a few years the dish itself was called doubles, and the Deens were selling them by the hundreds.

Their sons and grandsons kept the family business going for decades. Today there are hundreds of doubles vendors across Trinidad & Tobago and a diaspora that reaches everywhere Trinis have gone, but every one of them traces back to a husband-and-wife stand in Princes Town and one impatient customer asking for two pieces of bread instead of one.

the dish

If you grow up Trini, doubles is the breakfast you eat standing up. Two pillowy fried flatbreads (baras) wrapped around a spoon of curried chickpeas (channa), handed to you in a square of waxed paper that does not survive the first bite. Channa runs down your wrist. You eat the second one faster than the first.

The standard order is "two with slight pepper" or "two with plenty pepper" depending on your appetite and your honesty about your spice tolerance. Sweet sauce, cucumber chutney, tamarind, and mango kuchela all show up too, but pepper is the choice that actually matters.

at a glance

Origin Trinidad
Invented 1936, Princes Town
Eaten Breakfast / late night
How Standing up

ingredients

Bara (the bread) makes ~½ lb channa worth
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • ½ tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp salt
  • ¼ tsp turmeric (more if you want it deeply yellow)
  • 1 tsp instant yeast
  • 2 tsp brown sugar
  • Lukewarm water (enough to bring it together)

For a full 1 lb of channa, double everything (4 cups flour).

Channa (the filling) 1 lb dried
  • 1 lb dried chickpeas
  • 2 tsp baking soda (divided in two)
  • 2 tbsp ground bandhania (more if you like it green and herby)
  • 2 tbsp minced garlic
  • ¼ tsp turmeric (more if yours is dull in color)
  • Salt, to taste
To finish
  • 2 tsp bandhania (ground or chopped fresh)
  • 1 tsp anchar masala or ground roasted cumin

me making the channa

simmered down with bandhania, garlic, and turmeric.

method (the short version)

I'm not going to pretend this is the definitive recipe. Doubles is a thing you learn from watching someone make it once and then practicing until your baras stop coming out flat. The bara dough wants a warm proof and a hot, deep oil. The channa wants to be soaked overnight, boiled with the first half of the baking soda until soft enough to mash a little, then seasoned with the bandhania, garlic, turmeric, and salt and simmered down to a thick stew. Finish with the second hit of bandhania and a dust of anchar massala or roasted cumin.

For the actual step-by-step (with the dough rest times, oil temperature, and the right channa consistency), follow along with Cooking with Ria's video and her printable recipe at cookingwithria.com. That's where these ingredient amounts come from.

condiments

None of these are optional, even when you say "just pepper":