The Doubles are coming! The Doubles are coming!

(Heh). Isa Chandra Moskowitz, author of Vegan with a Vengeance, told a story about a well loved restaurant in her neighbourhood that suddenly closed down, and left her with her face planted against the glass, hoping against hope it would open again. The moment I read that, it took me back to a similar moment of my own. Roti Bistro on West 4th closed down a few years ago. Even though it was replaced by a perfectly respectatable (even though yuppified) vegetarian restaurant, I was quite disappointed.

Back when I was a Karate-Ka, I belonged to a Karate School that is based in Trinidad (and has a couple schools in Vancouver), Don Jitsu-Ryu. After class on Saturdays, as often as not we would go to Roti Bistro (a Trinidadian/Caribbean restaurant) for something to eat, because that was the day that Roti Bistro made doubles. Doubles on Saturday was not just what was on special. For us Karate students it was a Happening. Their Doubles were this absolutely delicious spicy chickpea concoction wrapped in this soft, yellow bread. And when they were sold out, that was it until next week. If you came too late, you were out of luck. Thinking back, I remembered that one of my instructors, who was Vegan, would dig in with similar gusto as the rest of us. So today I had a brainwave: I was going to try to make doubles myself.

It was not too easy to find on the internet as it is an extremely regional recipe apparently. Also the name of the bread "Bara" seems to be similar to some sort of sexual saying (what, I don't know), as for a while I was hitting more porn sites than food sites in my quest (eeek).

But I think I have a recipe figured out. I made doubles tonight, and they were delicious. Not to Roti Bistro standard, but pretty darn good. I would have taken a picture, but I ate them way too fast as I was so excited to test them. I am going to experiment with the bread a little more tomorrow, and then post the recipe.