Hard to beat the new Irish spud

This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column.

Michael Commane

There’s always the temptation to be nostalgic about the past. Of course there were great days fadó fadó but we also lived through some horrific events. Maybe the older we get the more we tend to concentrate on idyllic moments.

One of the highlights of my childhood was holidaying on my granduncle’s farm in Tipperary. I remember the fun we had out in the fields picking the new potatoes.

Reading Brendan O’Connor’s column in the Sunday Independent of July 12, where he writes in awe of the new Irish potato, I was back thinking of those Tipperary spuds.

On being discharged from hospital in Tralee in early July I headed home to West Kerry where I doused myself in self-sympathy. 

Part of that dousing involved indulging in the pleasure of eating new potatoes.

Friends supply me with new potatoes. If they do not deliver them to my door, I am eating them at their table.

The newly picked-from-the-field Irish spud has to be up there with the best of food anywhere in the world. I have wined and dined all over the world in the best of restaurants but it’s hard to beat the new Irish spud with dollops of Irish butter.

I’m embarrassed to admit here how many spuds I have eaten at one sitting on many occasions during my two weeks in West Kerry.

One evening everything on the plate was local, the fish, the spuds, the carrots, onions and beetroot.

I’m only an alright cook, indeed, really know nothing about the culinary art but I have learned how important it is to snatch the new Irish spud from the pot before it’s over-boiled. A few seconds can make such a difference. It needs to be snatched from the pot while it still puts up a tiny resistance to the penetrating fork. 

The new Irish spud can be lost for ever in the twinkling of an eye. 

That’s why it’s essential to watch those boiling spuds like a hawk.

But there’s so much mystery surrounding the new Irish spud. Yes, I have eaten tasty new potatoes in Dublin but they are never a patch on the spuds I have eaten in Tipperary or Kerry. 

Then again they are the places where I’ve spent great holidays, lived wild times, swam in the sea, whether in sunshine or rain. 

Is the new Irish spud in some way or other wrapped up for me in the psychology of being on holiday, doing nothing, lazing about, relaxing over a long breakfast? No, there is an intrinsic objective reality about the taste of a new Irish spud and I defy anyone to tell me otherwise.

This year for the first time I didn’t even use a brush to clean them, instead I used my fingers to remove the soil that was on them. It worked out fine and I ate the skins too.

I’ve been doing so much talking about the new Irish spud to a friend of mine who lives in Dublin that she has asked me to bring her up some.

 That’s fine if you have a car to throw them in the boot. It’s another story lugging them on and off trains and buses.

I’ll bring them up and keep some for myself. And the mystery is, I know they’ll have lost some of their magic when I’m eating them in Dublin. 

People talk about Guinness not travelling well. Maybe it’s the same with the new Irish spud? Then again, they’re longer out of the ground too.