Broodje Bakkeljauw

At a Surinamese broodjeszaak in Amsterdam, the cook lifts a spoonful of bakkeljauw out of the pan, packs it into a split pistolet, and lays raw onion and cucumber over the top before the fish has stopped steaming. At De Tokoman, whose Waterlooplein and Zeedijk counters sell rolls, one food writer reported that most of the queue was ordering it; at Tjin's in De Pijp, which bills itself as the oldest Surinamese broodjeszaak in the Netherlands, a guide singles out the bakkeljauw roll, extra spicy. The filling is salt cod, which Dutch calls bakkeljauw after the Portuguese bacalhau, and in these shops the word means cod that has been soaked and cooked until it is tender enough to eat with a roll.

The cooking decides everything, and it comes in two temperaments. The Albert Heijn recipe fries the flaked fish in a dry pan for fifteen to twenty minutes, stirring, until it turns fine and almost crumbly, then spoons it into an opened roll with cucumber and onion. Other cooks simmer the same fish with onion, garlic, tomato paste, fresh tomato and celery until it is juicy but still holds together on a spoon. The dry version crackles faintly against the crust and the salt stays sharp on the tongue; the stewed one soaks the crumb red and eats softer, with juice running toward the wrist while the onion and tomato steam off the roll.

Heat comes from the pepper, and the counter usually lets you set it. A thin slice of madame jeanette, the fruity Scotch-bonnet relative that Surinamese cooks favor, can be folded into the pan or laid raw along the cod, and a bottle of sambal does the same job at the table. Pickled cucumber is the sharp note against the salt, and Rotterdam's West-Kruiskade snack bars put it on their rolls. A good roll has a hard crust that cracks and a crumb that can take a wet spoonful; a soft white bun gives out before the fish does.

The fish itself is an old trade good. Salt cod crossed the Atlantic to provision plantation colonies for centuries, and a German food writer ties bakkeljauw in Suriname to the Portuguese. What is documented is how it eats today: the same cod is served over telo, strips of fried cassava, and Michelin's Dutch guide counts telo bakkeljauw among the classics of Surinamese cooking in Amsterdam. Put the fish in a roll and it turns into a lunch that travels in a paper bag.

The roll belongs to the toko, the Surinamese grocery that carries tropical produce in back and a sandwich counter in front. Alongside bakkeljauw the counter might offer broodje pom, with its citrusy taro-and-chicken casserole, hete kip, or liver, and Amsterdammers asked to name Surinamese favorites reach for bakkeljauw, roti, moksi alesi or a broodje pom without hesitating. The order is quick, the paper goes translucent in a minute, and the first bite is salty, hot and sour at once, with the cucumber giving a cold crunch between the soft fish and the crust.

Origin and history

Nobody has put a name or a date on the first broodje bakkeljauw. The dates belong to the community that carries it. Suriname became independent from the Netherlands on 25 November 1975, and in the years around that date tens of thousands of Surinamese people settled in Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam, many of them in the new high-rise district of the Bijlmer.

Their kitchens followed. A chef who moved from Suriname to the Bijlmer in 1981 told a Dutch newspaper that the neighborhood then had few Surinamese products, and that people travelled to the Albert Cuyp market for groceries. The tokos that filled that gap stocked the dried fish and peppers these cooks wanted, and the counters in front of them put the cooked cod into rolls.

Tjin's in De Pijp puts the start of its own roll counter in 1977, two years after independence, and still sells broodje bakkeljauw there from in front of its grocery shelves: salt cod from the Portuguese trade, cooked in a Surinamese pan, packed into a Dutch pistolet.