House recipe 01 · Doubles
Doubles, Slight Pepper
Doubles is the street food Trinidad wakes up to — two soft turmeric bara folded around curried channa, bought at the roadside and eaten standing over the wrapping paper. The classic order is "slight pepper," and that pepper has always been scotch bonnet. Ours goes in twice: a spoonful in the channa pot, and the drizzle at the table beside the cucumber chutney.
- Serves
- Makes about 18 bara — 9 doubles; serves 4 to 6
- Active
- 1 hour
- Total
- About 3 hours, plus an overnight soak for the channa
The cook
- 01
Mix the bara dough
Whisk the flour, yeast, sugar, salt, turmeric, and geera in a large bowl. Add the warm water and mix to a soft, slightly sticky dough — softer than roti dough, and it should be. Knead in the bowl for two minutes, film with oil, cover, and rest 1 to 1 1/2 hours until doubled.
- 02
Boil the channa
Drain the soaked channa, cover with fresh water by two inches, and boil until tender but still holding shape, 45 minutes to an hour. Reserve 2 cups of the cooking liquid before draining. Canned channa skips this step; use plain water in its place.
- 03
Cook down the curry
Stir the curry powder and ground geera with 1/4 cup water into a loose paste. Heat the oil in a heavy pot, soften the onion and garlic, then add the paste and cook, stirring, until the water is gone and the curry darkens and grips the pot, about 2 minutes. This is where the channa gets its flavor; do not rush it.
- 04
Curry the channa
Add the channa and turn until every pea is coated. Pour in the reserved liquid, bring to a simmer, and cook 20 to 25 minutes, crushing some channa against the side of the pot so the gravy thickens. It should end soft, wet, and spoonable — doubles channa runs looser than curry channa for roti.
- 05
Season the pot
Stir in 1 tablespoon of Sunny Island Pepper Sauce, the roasted geera, and salt to taste. Simmer 5 minutes more, then fold in the bandhania off the heat. The sauce's vinegar and scotch bonnet lift the curry without shouting over it.
The sauce moment
- 06
Make the cucumber chutney
Squeeze about half the water from the grated cucumber, then toss it with the garlic, bandhania, lime juice, and salt. Keep it cold. It is the cooling half of the pepper-sauce equation on the finished double.
- 07
Fry the bara
Heat 2 inches of oil to 350 F (175 C). With well-oiled hands, pull golf-ball pieces of dough and flatten each thin, 4 to 5 inches across, then slide into the oil. Fry 15 to 20 seconds a side until puffed and lightly blistered, and drain on paper.
- 08
Build and drizzle
Lay two bara overlapping on wax paper. Spoon on hot channa, add a spoonful of cucumber chutney, and drizzle with Sunny Island Pepper Sauce — the classic order is slight pepper, but that call is yours. Fold and eat standing up, over the paper.
The sauce moment
From the family
The bara dough should feel too sticky to handle — that stickiness is what fries into softness. Work with oiled hands instead of flouring the dough; every extra spoon of flour costs you a soft bara.
This one needs the jar.
1 tbsp stirred into the channa pot for the last 10 minutes of simmering · A drizzle over each assembled double at the table, beside the cucumber chutney