kitchen therapy with Rosie Birkett

Give salad the Jersey Royal treatment with Rosie's rustic new potato platter

- ROSIE BIRKETT

Some ingredients just beg to be coupled up and, like the most dynamic couples, they bring out the best in one another. From the glorious minute that Jersey Royal potatoes come into season - and they are, happily, well and truly with us by now- I long to cook them and eat them with fresh crab. Jerseys and crab hold a particularly special place in my repertoire because they will always remind me of my dear dad, who, growing up in and later moving back to Kent, had a keen sense of British seasonality.

I have an enduring memory of his passion for Jersey potatoes, his excitement at the beginning of their fleeting season, and his penchant for pairing them with some fresh crab from the fishmonger. He'd bring home a large, recently dispatched beast wrapped in newspaper, open it up on the kitchen table and pour himself a strong G&T.

Then he'd take a good few hours cracking and mining it for the sweet, tasty meat, using special implements he'd brought back from our French camping holidays.

He took such pride in dressing the crab himself, carefully making his own delicious mayonnaise and folding it through the meat, along with a good pinch of cayenne pepper and a little spritz of lemon. We'd eat it with poached and buttered Jersey Royals, and there's something about the combination of the creamy, yet deeply mineral potatoes with the nutty, sweet crab that is wonderfully harmonious.

Jersey potatoes are cultivated in soil richly fertilised with vraic - a plentiful seaweed harvested on the beaches - on the steep, coastal slopes or 'cotils' of the island, so I suppose it makes sense that they have a natural affinity with seafood. They'll be served with many a fish supper in my house until the season is over. I'll also be working them into tarts, roast dinners and, quite frankly, eating them on their own with quite a lot of butter, sea salt and black pepper. A true simple early summer pleasure.