Our butcher is on rue de Flandre

There are two ways to buy meat for a kitchen. The first fits in a click: a catalogue, a reference number, a truck. The second fits in a street. Ours is rue de Flandre, in the low end of Brussels, a street that has been feeding this city for centuries, between the terraces of Sainte-Catherine and narrow house fronts that have not moved.

That is where our butcher works. We will not put his shop name in a sales pitch, he never asked us to and it is not our style. But the street, yes, we name it, because an address commits you. Saying "our suppliers are carefully selected" costs nothing and promises nothing. Saying "our butcher is on rue de Flandre" gives you a place where our word can be checked.

What we buy from him is, first of all, a sausage. A real one, the kind that holds its shape: a frank, coarse grind, fat placed where it belongs, natural casing, seasoning that does not shout. An artisan's sausage does not need to be interesting, it needs to be right. In the pan, on Saturday, it caramelises slowly, and that sweet-savoury crust is what makes the whole dish.

A smooth mash is a mash that lost its nerve.

Because the sausage does not travel alone: it lies down on a stoemp. The word is Brussels to the bone, and so is the gesture. A stoemp is not a purée: it is potato crushed thick, run through with softened carrot and leek, mounted with butter and cream, lifted with nutmeg. You crush it with a fork, never a blender. There must be terrain left, pieces that stand up for themselves. Smooth is the courtesy of a grand hotel; stoemp is the courtesy of a home.

The sausage

From our butcher on rue de Flandre. Coarse grind, natural casing, caramelised at the cook.

The stoemp

Potato, carrot, leek. Crushed coarse, never smooth.

The nutmeg

Grated at the last moment, because powdered nutmeg is a memory of nutmeg.

We are sometimes asked why we insist on naming things, the butcher's street, the lamb's farm the week it changes, the exact day we cook. The answer is simple: in a market where everyone says "fresh", "artisanal" and "quality", adjectives are dead. Only proper nouns are left. A street, a day, a gesture. What can be checked does not need to be taken on faith.

Stoemp and sausage is Sunday lunch in its purest state, the dish the grandmothers of this city set down without announcing it. We cook it on Saturday, it reaches you on Sunday, and it waits quietly in the fridge for the weeknight when you need a street in Brussels to cook for you.