Pigeon peas image via Canva Pro.
By Natalie Briggs
When I first met Florence Warrick-Joseph, there were two things I didn’t know. One, we were related in that pumpkin vine way only Caribbean people can be. Two, the doubles I had just bought from her at a pop-up market had a surprise in them.
It wasn’t the comforting warmth of a bara hot out of the box, leaking through greaseproof paper. It wasn’t the silken tear of teeth into that just-fried pillowy goodness, which, if you’re lucky, will still hold a hint of the crackle of oil.
No, it wasn’t that.
It was the filling. Cucumber, check. Sweet sauce, check. The heady bouquet of garlic, cumin and spices was there. But there was something different in the mouth feel. It wasn’t the melt-in-your-mouth consistency of the channa that makes doubles a national byword in Trinidad and Tobago. Tasty, yes … but different.
The same bouquet is heavy in Warrick-Joseph’s small kitchen, tickling the nostrils, making me think about the last time I ate. “I don’t curry the peas. I stew it,” she revealed, while demonstrating how she puts her spin on the popular street food. This is not her only departure from the norm. The peas she uses? They are pigeon peas.
These days, it isn’t quite the record scratch moment it was when it first appeared — but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. What we should be discussing is how pigeon peas, the stuff of pelau and coconut milk stew-downs, ended up in doubles. It started as an exhortation to think outside the box.
In 2014, Warrick-Joseph, a retired registered nurse, decided to do an event management course. Her lecturer asked the cohort to stretch themselves beyond the ho-hummery of birthday parties and christenings for their practicum. She was an avid planter of pigeon peas, one of the many members of the Upper Cemetery Street Residents’ Association in Diego Martin, to do so. They had a bumper crop that year.
“We were walking back down the hill,” Warrick-Joseph recalled. “Me, Errol [her husband] and Mr. Timothy. And he asked what were we going to do with all these peas. My husband said, ‘We will freeze it, we will sell it.’ Because that is what people do to get money to put in the organisation. So I said, thinking out of the box, we could have a pigeon peas festival.”
The two men were sceptical. Warrick-Joseph continued, “They were like, ‘Nobody ever heard of a pigeon peas festival.’ I said, ‘I’ve heard of a mango festival. I’ve heard of a breadfruit festival. There’s a chocolate festival. Why not pigeon peas?’”
The stage was set, but the main players were yet to arrive. They had the peas, but it would literally take a village to showcase their versatility. By the time the first festival rolled around in 2015, it was a result of a true community effort. They were able to generate so many recipes, including a version of doubles, that there were enough to fill a commemorative book.
Florence Warrick-Joseph at the 2025 Pigeon Peas Festival. Screenshot from a video on TTT Live Online‘s YouTube channel. Fair use.
“We got someone to do pholourie,” Warrick-Joseph said. “We got somebody who could do pigeon peas accra. Everybody ended up taking a recipe. We found people in the community who could do these things. The pigeon peas roti was from a woman who did roti, and instead of using the dhal with the split peas, she used the pigeon peas.”
Pholourie? Accra? Roti? It wasn’t such a stretch of the imagination. After all, pigeon peas’ nutty, earthy flavour lends itself well to a variety of savoury preparations. That’s why it’s a perennial favourite across the Caribbean.
But Warrick-Joseph was about to hit me another curveball. That first festival, she came up with four of her own recipes. One for ice cream. One for a punch. One for a pigeon peas wine. Then one for a liqueur. Two of those are sweet. One of them officially qualifies as dessert. The trick was in picking, shelling and stewing the fresh pigeon peas to form the custard base all within 24 hours, while they were still full of flavour. My mind had more difficulty wrapping around the idea of pigeon peas as this creamy, cold concoction.
There were no such problems with the muffins. As I stood and watched her prepare them, different scents filled the kitchen, this time with her signature spice blend. It was the spice, I realised, that gave it the illusion of being sweet. I hadn’t seen her put a lot of sugar into the mixture. The eventual result was dense, reminding me more of a coconut drop than the traditional muffin with its cakey crumb. Fresh out of the oven, breaking into one was a treat; I could smell the spices wafting up from the steamy centre. There was nutmeg. Some cinnamon, too.
Nothing in the flavour screamed pigeon peas. That was more in the texture and the solidity with which it sat in my stomach. One muffin felt like a full meal, which led me to ask about the nutritional benefits of the pigeon peas substitution. I found out that, among other things, they were high in potassium and fibre, and were good for gut flora, diabetics, and women who wanted to lose weight.
In fact, it was trying to cater to customers who wanted healthier alternatives to doubles that prompted Warrick-Joseph to come up with a recipe for gluten-free bara, made with pigeon pea flour: “The reason for the switch was that people felt they wanted gluten-free. There was a group of people that was intolerant to normal flour.”
These were what I had really come to see her prepare, the muffins being a delectable side journey. I knew it would be different from the first doubles I had from her, since the bara in that one had been made the regular way, with flour, leavening agent and oil. How different this version would be, both in taste and feel, was left to be seen.
It was a three-flour mix, including the ground pigeon peas, which resulted in a tacky, sticky sort of dough that was allowed to rest for about half an hour. While it did that, Warrick-Joseph warmed the oil in which she would fry them later, and prepared the pigeon peas filling. We talked about many things while she did this, including her business and her plans to eventually have pre-packaged products in the supermarket.
When she deemed the dough ready, she put the peas aside. The low gluten content made it difficult to handle as it tears easily, which is why she prefers to use a pastelle press to shape them, instead of rolling them out the traditional way. From there, the perfect circles went into the warmed oil, where they puff up slightly — nothing like the regular bara, because of the low gluten content. By the time they are done, I’m itching to try them.
Warrick-Joseph presented them to me on a plate, complete with pigeon peas filling, cucumber and a tangy tamarind sweet sauce. I took a bite, and chewed slowly, trying to make up my mind about them. The verdict? All the elements were there. This tasted like doubles. Purists might draw the line at the bara, which was more reminiscent of a soft taco shell — flatter, with a slight, mealy crunch to it — while health enthusiasts might hail it as the thing to make doubles great again.
