One of the great and simple dishes goes under a modest description on the menu. It is Potato Skins, with bacon and cheese and sour cream. Only one establishment which serves it daily is known here, but it may be widespread throughout the country. It is created from halved potatoes from which most of the content has been scooped; the centre is then filled with cheese and chopped bacon, and grilled. It comes to you crisp and hot, and, with a mixed salad on the same plate, is a wow. The cooks among you will reckon that to scoop out a lot of the potato without breaking the skin, means that the spud is first boiled or parboiled. Anyway, would that this dish were to be found at every eating stop. The particular one regularly encountered is at the Orwell Hotel, Orwell Road, Rathgar, Dublin.
You can treat a good spud of some size in a simpler way at home. A recent gift from friends in the Portlaoise area of a box of Roosters, has led to an orgy of baked potato. First, well scrubbed, for eating the skin is one of the great pleasures, then slashed, adding, when cooked butter mixed with chives or anchovies or what you wish. Some of these potatoes were the size of, and perhaps near the weight of, hand-grenades. They are the cause of addiction from now on.
Mrs. Beeton gives a lot of space to the potato: How to Boil Potatoes; The Irish (and Best) way to Boil Potatoes, and steaming and frying and mashing. Most intriguing heading is A German way of cooking Potatoes or Pommes de Terre a l'Allemande. Just for the hell of it, though surely no one will try it. Take eight middle sized potatoes, 3 ounces of butter, 2 tablespoonfuls of flour, 1/2 pint of broth, 2 tablespoonfuls of vinegar. Put the butter and flour into the stewpan; stir over the fire until the butter is a nice brown colour; add the broth and vinegar; peel and cut the potatoes into long, thin slices, lay them in the gravy and simmer until tender - say 10 to 15 minutes - and serve very hot. She recommends adding a laurel leaf. Surely not. A bay leaf, maybe.
And, perhaps irrelevantly, the chairman of the IFA Meath committee is quoted in the Meath Chronicle: that there is no room whatsoever for an increase in the national potato acreage in 1998. In 1997 and 1996, too large a potato acreage led to "disastrously low prices". Y