Pigeon Peas Festival in Diego MartinCEFR B2
24 Sept 2025
Adapted from Guest Contributor, Global Voices • CC BY 3.0
Photo by Gabre Cameron, Unsplash
The pigeon peas festival in Diego Martin grew from a class assignment and a surplus harvest. After an event management course in 2014, Florence Warrick-Joseph proposed the idea; despite initial scepticism, the community organised the first festival in 2015. The event showed how a local crop can be celebrated and reworked into new products.
Organisers compiled many recipes and published a commemorative book. Traditional and adapted dishes featured prominently: pholourie, accra, roti and an adapted doubles with stewed pigeon peas. Warrick-Joseph developed both sweet and savoury innovations. Her sweet creations include an ice cream, a punch, a pigeon-peas wine and a liqueur made by picking, shelling and stewing fresh peas to form a custard-like base within 24 hours while flavour is at its peak.
She also experimented with baked and fried items. Her muffins, spiced with nutmeg and cinnamon, are dense and closer to a coconut drop than a light cake. Responding to demand for healthier options, she made a gluten-free bara from pigeon pea flour. The three-flour dough proved sticky and low in gluten, so she uses a pastelle press to shape the bara; the fried pieces are flatter and slightly mealy and are served with stewed pigeon peas, cucumber and tamarind sweet sauce.
Warrick-Joseph continues to run a small food business and plans to offer pre-packaged products in supermarkets in the future. The festival and the recipes showed how a local crop can be used in both traditional and unexpected ways.
Difficult words
- surplus — extra amount left after a need
- scepticism — doubt about whether something will work
- commemorative — made to remember or honour something
- innovation — a new method, idea or productinnovations
- gluten-free — made without the protein gluten
- pastelle press — a tool used to shape dough for pastelle
Tip: hover, focus or tap highlighted words in the article to see quick definitions while you read or listen.
Discussion questions
- How can celebrating a local crop help a community economically or culturally? Give two possible effects.
- Which of the festival dishes or innovations from the article would you like to try, and why? Describe the taste or texture you expect.
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