Dou­bles is hands-down Trinidad and To­ba­go’s #1 street food! Make sure to cus­tomise your dou­bles just the way you like it with condi­ments like cu­cum­bers, man­go chut­ney, sweet sauce and pep­per sauce” Try out this recipe for a home­made twist to this quin­tes­sen­tial Tri­ni must-have street food.

BARA

IN­GRE­DI­ENTS

1 tea­spoon yeast

1/4 cup luke­warm wa­ter

1 tea­spoon brown sug­ar

2 cups flour

1 1/2 tea­spoon salt

1/2 tea­spoon turmer­ic

1/2 cup luke­warm wa­ter

1 ta­ble­spoon oil

Oil for shap­ing bara

3 cups of oil for fry­ing

DI­REC­TIONS

1 In a large bowl, add 1 cup of flour with your yeast, sug­ar, turmer­ic, salt and add 1/2 cup of warm wa­ter. Be­gin knead­ing and let sit for 5 min­utes.

2 Grad­u­al­ly in the re­main­ing flour and add ad­di­tion­al wa­ter to as­sist in the knead­ing process. Shape your dough in­to a large ball and coat with 1 ta­ble­spoon of oil.

3 Set in a warm place cov­ered with a tea tow­el or cling wrap and leave to rise for 30 min­utes.

4 Af­ter 30 min­utes, take your bara dough and shape in­to small balls and lay out on your clean coun­ter­top or tray.

5 Grease your hands with oil and flat­ten out bara dough in­to cir­cles, start­ing from the edges and leav­ing the cen­tre a lit­tle thick­er.

6 Pour oil for fry­ing in a heavy bot­tom pot and al­low to heat for 5 min­utes on a high flame.

7 When the oil is very hot, gen­tly lay one bara in the oil. The cook­ing process takes less than 10 sec­onds per bara. Make sure to flip quick­ly and drain on pa­per tow­els .

CHAN­NA FILL­ING

IN­GRE­DI­ENTS

Boil­ing the Chan­na

1lb dried chan­na

1tb­sp bak­ing so­da

10 cups wa­ter

1 ta­ble­spoon salt

4 leaves chopped shadon beni

6 cloves chopped gar­lic

1 medi­um onion chopped

4 pi­men­tos chopped

1/2 cup chives

3 sprigs fine thyme

1 ta­ble­spoon saf­fron

Cur­ry­ing the Chan­na

1 tea­spoon geera seeds (cumin)

11/2 ta­ble­spoons oil

1/2 cup chives

1tb­sp saf­fron

1 tea­spoon dried fine thyme

1 ta­ble­spoon cur­ry pow­der

1/2 cup wa­ter

Salt to taste

2 tea­spoons roast­ed geera pow­der (op­tion­al)

DI­REC­TIONS

1 Soak your dried chan­na for at least 3 hours or overnight.

2 Wash and drain the chan­na and place in a pres­sure cook­er or a boil­ing pot and add the sea­son­ings for pres­sur­ing the chan­na.

3 If you are us­ing a pres­sure cook­er (fol­low your pres­sure cook­er’s guide­lines), cook on high pres­sure 20 min­utes be­fore the whis­tle sounds. If you are boil­ing on the stove, boil for 1 hour or un­til chan­na is ten­der.

4 Re­move your pres­sure cook­er from heat and re­lease pres­sure in your sink un­der cool wa­ter.

5 In a heavy bot­tom pot, heat the oil and add the geera seeds. Saute for 30 sec­onds and add in all the oth­er in­gre­di­ents ex­cept the wa­ter and chan­na.

6 Cook for one minute then add the wa­ter and cook for an­oth­er minute or un­til the wa­ter evap­o­rates.

7 Add the cooked chan­na with boil­ing liq­uid and cook on the stove­top for 5-8 min­utes to al­lows flavours to be­come in­cor­po­rat­ed

7 Thick­en the gravy by smash­ing some of the chan­na. Right be­fore the chan­na is fin­ished, add salt and geera to taste.

8 Serve on your hot bara and en­joy!

Recipe by An­n­Marie Ram­bal­ly

An­n­Marie Ram­bal­ly owns a cater­ing busi­ness called An­nie’s Culi­nary Cui­sine. She has been cook­ing since the age of 12 and was taught by her moth­er and grand­moth­er. “Cook­ing is my pas­sion and it brings me great joy to see peo­ple en­joy what I cre­ate.”

Fol­low An­nie on Face­book and In­sta­gram: @An­nie’s Culi­nary Cui­sine