Lindsey likes to boil them in their skins to retain flavour - essential if they

Lindsey likes to boil them in their skins to retain flavour - essential if they are small. You don't need asbestos fingers to peel them, she says, if you plunge them into cold water for 30 seconds. Despite its humble standing, few ingredients reward your efforts as generously as a spud. Freshly-dug, organically-grown potatoes are the best for flavour." Unfortunately, most of the potatoes that end up on our plates these days tend to be bland and tasteless, probably due to methods of agriculture: the use of sandy soil for optimum yields, and the over-watering and force-feeding of crops with artificial fertilisers to speed growth.But how you cook them is important, too. We demand varieties specifically earmarked for baking or roasting, for boiling or mashing, for chips and for salads (floury potatoes are best for chips and mashing; waxy ones for boiling and dishes where they need to hold their shape).Lindsey Bareham has experimented with every sort, though she confesses to a "volte-face": "I've come round to realising that the way a potato is grown can be as important as the variety.

This is in part due to Lindsey Bareham's book, In Praise of the Potato.Much has happened since she wrote it 10 years ago. Instead of simply choosing between reds or whites, most people now know the differences between Desiree or Romana (red) and Maris Piper, Cara and King Edward (the main whites). For these premium potatoes fetch anything from pounds 1.50 a pound upwards.We eat fewer potatoes these days ("Dig for Britain", the civvy slogan of the last war, meant "Dig Potatoes") but we've become a good deal more sophisticated and demanding. They spread it on the land, where it acts first as a mulch, protecting plants against wind and cold and suppressing weeds; and then, when it has rotted down, as a fertiliser rich in nutrients.The rest of the story is one of determined marketing. These days the plants are pegged down under miles of shiny, perforated polythene wrapping, creating the appearance of ski-slopes.Turning adversity to advantage, the islanders evade the high cost of importing commercial manures from the mainland by using the thick, green, slimy seaweed which covers the rocks at low tide. In the 1880s a local farmer, Hugh de la Haye, cut a seed potato into 16 pieces to sprout and found that they grew into shapes quite unlike the parent.The Channel Islands, being the southernmost point in the British Isles, have a higher average temperature than the mainland, but the weather there is by no means balmy and it requires a feat of husbandry to nurse early crops and protect them from the biting winter winds. But add a dab of Beurre d'Isigny (from a French coastal town 100 miles to the east of Jersey) and a pinch of Malden salt, and a bowl of Jerseys is an irresistible treat. The Jersey Royal Fluke, to give it its full title, is a remarkable potato which owes its name to a fluke of breeding.

Properly cooked (for 10 minutes after the water comes to the boil), they will taste nutty, like almonds, their texture slightly waxy Even without butter they taste buttery. Some find its flavour too earthy and its texture too slippery I can't agree. Since the emergence of other unusual varieties, such as black potatoes (pommes de Madagascar or negresses which are, in fact, purple), pink fir apples and rattes, the waxy salad potato, the Jersey can no longer claim to be the unique potato that it has been. But these creamy yellow, kidney-shaped potatoes do continue to be the most highly-prized of the tuber family, their skins so delicate that you can rub them away with your thumb Of course, not everyone loves a Jersey. IS THE JERSEY the ultimate potato? Last week the new season's outdoor potatoes were launched on the UK market, the first of some 47,000 tons that will arrive from Jersey over the next eight weeks. This gets the gravy treatment, and then the Guinness on the side At least some of us think of flavour matching. If it's been a few days, and there's not much sport on the telly, I'll actually cook something like a full-on vincisgrassi, which is a rich sort of lasagne full of things like sheep brains and sweetbreads, and other stuff that generally warrant a lift of the eyebrow when I suggest them for dinner.I even put out a tablecloth and a candle, and I drink my wine from a glass It's usually about that time that she rings, from wherever "No, don't worry about me, I'm fine What? Oh, just staying home tonight on my own There's probably something in the fridge to eat.".

Put some soy on the side, and an Asian beer or 10, and dinner is served.By the second night, I start feeling a little meaty, so it's generally sausage time. It seems to me there is something about your humble breakfast banger that women just don't get. All I have do is throw some rice and water in my trusty Chinese rice cooker, wait for it to smell good, then bung in some sliced Chinese lup cheong sausage and a finely chopped spring onion and leave them alone for 10 minutes. I find I run to three basic stages.The first stage is the first night, when I'm revelling in the fact that I don't actually have to do anything stupid like dress up to go out, drink from a glass, stack the dish-washer, and pick the papers up from the floor. She loves it so much, she keeps asking me when I'm going away.Her drink of choice is Campari and soda, lots of ice Don't go looking for flavour matches or anything logical These are not the nights to be logical The point is that it makes her happy It's not quite so simple for some of us.