Essentially, ‘Doubles’ is a sandwich of sorts. It is made with two bara (which I can only describe as a oily, thinner, sweeter and fried version flatbread) filled with channa (curried chick peas). It can then be topped with mango, shadon beni, cucumber, coconut, tamarind, and pepper sauce.
There are two tales of how ‘doubles’ came to be and both are closely related to the History of Trinidad and Tobago.
The first tale involves a man named Paray Ramnarine. As he recounts his history as the son of indentured workers and a sugar estate in his memoirs, he relates his version of how doubles was born. He speaks of him and his friend going to a Mr. Singh, Mr. Singh used to provide the boys with bara and channa, a conveniently cheap meal the indentured workers turned to in the face of economic struggle. One day he asked Mr. Singh to put the channa on the bara rather than in a paper cone, and when this didn’t work he asked him to put another bara on top to hold the chana thus leading to the birth of ‘doubles’.
The second tale is written by Badru Deen, and this account can be found in his book “Out of the Doubles Kitchen”. He claims that the dish was created by his father, Emamool Deen, who created the dish as a result of a light bulb moment where he put another bara on top of the one with the peas on it. Simple enough right? However, Deen’s account of the creation of the dish goes beyond the food itself, but speaks to the inventive nature of Indo-Trinidadians and there desire to escape the prison known as indentureship.
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