IT'S five to six, the twilight zone, and there are six children to feed - your own and a handful of their friends. Or... it's 8 p.m. on a summer's evening, the sun is shining and there are few things more appealing than a huge bowl of buttery, new potatoes served with a crunchy, herby salad.
Never mind what foreigners say about us when they realise that we eat them almost every day - buf! Potatoes will always be with us. All the more reason to welcome a smart new book devoted to the comforting spud; a carefully selected mix of traditional and contemporary recipes peppered with sound advice.
The book fell into Eveleen Coyle's lap by accident. As editor for Gill & Macmillan, she became somewhat exasperated by the length of time the project was taking. Crankily, someone said: "Well why don't you do it." Rashly, she replied: "Well I will ..." thus subjecting her family to months of eating potatoes for breakfast, dinner and tea as she tested and measured recipes from family, friends, neighbours and favourite cookery writers (including Theodora FitzGibbon, whose books Coyle has had reprinted).
Coyle is a literary publicist for most of the best known British publishing houses as well as a commissioning editor for G&M. She works from home in a bright, airy office overlooking the garden ("The children know never to interrupt me when I'm in there ... although the occasional note does get shoved under the door or plastered up against the glass.") Elegant, engaging, well spoken, she and her husband Fergus have five year old twins, two adolescents in the house and, perhaps uniquely in Ranelagh, four hens.
Cooking is clearly a pleasurable pasttime in this kitchen - it's very much the heart of the house, you realise, as you take in the indelible scent of regular baking, the roughly cut homemade bread on the sideboard, the jug full of fresh mint and the sight of Clare, aged 5, carrying around a newly fetched egg in the skirt of her dress.
Where else but in Ranelagh, I ask you?
The book is confident and concise: Coyle begins with soups and moves on to methods for the best mashed, roast, steamed and baked potatoes before arriving, humbly, at The Best Chips In The World. The rest of the book is devoted to dozens of main courses and side dishes, followed by warm and cold salads and potato cakes.
There is also good advice on storing and cooking methods ("We don't peel potatoes around here at all if we can help it"). Best of all there is a list of the varieties available in Ireland with notes on what they are good for... This is worth memorising - no matter how customer friendly supermarkets become, it can still be puzzling to sort through the plastic wrapped mountains of spuds each week.
A favourite recipe? She considers the potato pizza with mozzarella, the garlicky sliced potatoes, and then decides on potatoes with buttermilk. "it's dead easy." Here it is:
8 medium potatoes
225 ml/8fl oz/1 cup cream 225 ml/8fl oz/1 cup buttermilk 2 tsp French mustard Salt and pepper Cheddar cheese 110 g/4 oz white 30g/1 oz freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Clean the potatoes and parboil for about 15 minutes. Drain, peel and halve them and place flatside down in a buttered baking dish. Mix the cream, buttermilk and mustard in a bowl, season and pour over the potatoes.
Grate the Cheddar cheese on top, followed by the Parmesan. Bake in a fairly hot oven (190 C/ 375 F/Gas 5) for 30-40 minutes. The buttermilk and cheese blend into the potatoes and they become crusty on top.
. The Irish Potato Book by Eveleen Coyle is published by Gill & Macmillan, price £3.99; The Irish Oatmeal Cookbook by Ruth Isabel Ross is a part of the same series.