Slavink

Slavink is the sort of word that tells on a country. Sla is lettuce, vink is finch, and here is a cylinder of seasoned minced meat in bacon, with neither leaf nor bird in sight. Dutch humour can be very dry, especially when wrapped by a butcher before supper.

At my grandmother's table, this was not Sunday food. It belonged to the small ordinary triumph of getting a proper meal on the table after work: boiled potatoes, a green vegetable, and one browned roll per plate, two if the child had cycled through rain and looked persuasive. But let me tell you a secret. These small butcher's inventions are where Dutch food often hides its cleverness, not in spectacle, but in a strip of ontbijtspek, thin breakfast bacon, arranged so it bastes the mince while it crisps around it.

The older blinde vink, blind finch, used veal or beef around a minced filling; the slavink walks into the postwar butcher's counter and comes out cheaper, quicker, and frankly more useful. A little nutmeg in the gehakt, minced meat, is not extravagance but the old spice cupboard made domestic. Brown it with patience, seam side first, then lower the heat and let the bacon do its work. Hou het altijd simpel: if the outside is dark before the centre is cooked, the pan is bragging and the supper is losing.