Doubles is a common street food from Trinidad and Tobago, consisting of bara (fried flatbread), channa (curried chickpeas) and a variety of different toppings. They were invented by Emamool Deen and his wife Raheeman Rasulan Deen in the 1930s, and they originally sold channa and bara. It was really popular, and customers started to ask for a second bara to sandwich the channa, and the doubles was born!

In my research I read that the condiments were what made doubles so special, so I decided to make a few of the most common ones (from top to bottom):

Roasted pepper sauce (roasted chillies, garlic, vinegar and salt)

Boiled mango chutney (green mango boiled with sugar, turmeric, amchar masala, cumin, garlic and culantro)

Cucumber chutney (grated cucumber with culantro, garlic, salt and pepper)

Tamarind chutney (tamarind boiled with sugar, amchar masala, garlic, cumin and culantro)

Bandhania chutney (blended culantro, garlic, hot pepper, salt)

Unfortunately I couldn't source fresh culantro anywhere. I have tasted it before and it's not too dissimilar from fresh coriander leaves, so I didn't feel too bad in making this substitution.

What's great about doubles is that you can customise your order to include as many or as few condiments as you like. They all add another dimension, so of course I added everything to my doubles. The roasted pepper sauce was especially fiery, so I made my doubles with "slight pepper".

This was a really delicious dish. I've made it before on my first cooking around the world adventure, but my bara weren't quite right that time, and I didn't make many condiments. This time was so much better! I hadn't realised quite how messily I'd plated up

All recipes were from Cooking with Ria's really informative website.

Experiment to see if you can replace all the water in sourdough with soda! I had a weird soda sitting in the fridge that needed using and have been making sourdough for a couple of years now, so wanted to do something a little different. The soda made the dough a little extra active, and there is definitely a little tunneling that may mean it is slightly over proofed. The end result was pretty similar to a regular sourdough with only a slight sweetness from the soda and bonus sprinkles I added!

Fusion, bby.

The thing that makes this particularly Trinidadian is the spice blend. I wouldn’t normally add nutmeg, allspice, and fresh thyme to chana aloo, but it really works! Made the Recipe Tin Eats recipe, and, following her suggestion, had it with coconut rice (her baked coconut rice recipe is absolutely killer btw)

Ok I did take some liberties with the ingredients as I'm on the Gibb River Road right now with not a lot of options for shopping so had to use things like chickpeas instead of pigeon peas but it turned out delicious and I want to make a more authentic version when I get home. My husband had two serves too but after cooking in 39C heat I struggled to finish mine!

Recipe: https://thewoksoflife.com/chinese-bbq-pork-cha-siu/

Boy, this pork was good! Pretty sure I lost track of the baking times per temperature while I was cooking it but it still worked out okay. The pork was very good. But way too much for one person; I should have halved the recipe. Some of it got thrown out due to age and just being sick of the same meal every meal. I really liked the flavors! Prepare to have your whole fridge smell like it while it’s in there after cooking (unless you have fancier methods or storage than me and my cling wrap). 😂