New Potatoes with Mint and Butter

The first Jersey Royals arrive at the market sometime in late May, and for a few weeks they are the best thing you can buy. Small, kidney-shaped, their skins still papery and thin. They smell of the earth they came from. I pick them up and they feel like the start of something.

You don't do much with a potato like this. You boil it in good salted water, drain it, and roll it in butter while it's still hot. Tear some mint over the top. That's the recipe. I could dress it up, add capers or shallots or a squeeze of lemon, and sometimes I do, but the honest version is the best one. Butter, mint, salt. The potato does the rest.

This is a June side dish, the kind you put in a warm bowl in the middle of the table next to whatever else you're having. A piece of fish. Some lamb chops off the grill. A plate of green beans. It doesn't compete with anything. It just belongs there, the way certain foods belong to certain months. I wrote it down in the notebook years ago: "Jerseys. Butter. Mint. First proper warm evening." I make the same note every year and it never needs updating.

There are few better feelings than putting a bowl of these in front of someone on a long June evening when the windows are open and nobody is in a hurry. We're only making dinner. But sometimes dinner is enough.