The pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan) is the small, round, beige-to-speckled seed of a woody tropical shrub — known as toor or arhar dal in India, gandules in the Caribbean and Congo pea or no-eye pea elsewhere — and one of the oldest cultivated pulses of the Old World tropics. Nutty, earthy and faintly sweet, the seed is sold dried whole, as yellow split dal, fresh-green like a garden pea, or canned, and it cooks to a soft, creamy tenderness. It anchors a sweep of warm-climate cuisines: it is the toor dal at the heart of South Indian sambar, the gandules in Caribbean rice-and-peas and Puerto Rican arroz con gandules, and a backbone bean of stews across East Africa. Drought- hardy, protein-rich and grown on smallholder plots from a perennial shrub, it is a quiet pillar of food security across the semi-arid tropics.