Above: Potatoes worth looking for: top, a German Butterball, and from left, an All Blue, Ruby Crescent fingerling, Red Thumb fingerling, Russian Banana fingerling, Peruvian Blue and Yellow Finn.

I DON'T KNOW if it was the first time I ever dug a potato, but I do know that it was a revelation. The sun bore down on the dry ground, even though the air was already cold. The soil was piled in long, mounded rows and the withered potato vines were markers for where to dig. We plunged our hands into the piles of soft loamy earth and came out with balls of gold as big as goose eggs. They were Yellow Finn potatoes and they were pure golden sunlight when we boiled them and shook them in a pan with butter.

I was at a farm - not much more than a garden really - owned by the same man that owned the restaurant where I worked, and I was working with Greg Brickman, the gardener. A short man with a long beard, a sparkle in his eye and a impish grin, he was something like a leprechaun in the garden. He grew Yellow Finns, Purple Peruvians and Russian Bananas. I thought he was a little out there. I just wanted plain red "C's," small potatoes that I could brown in olive oil with rosemary and serve with my rack of lamb. But Greg had a penchant for the obscure, and he was always seeking out and finding unusual varieties of everything.

He introduced me to yellow beets, candy-cane radishes, purple green beans and weird greens like orick and mizuna. Eventually, I would come to cherish those vegetables, and coax other farmers into growing them for me, but at first I was a little dubious. "Will they taste good?" I wanted to know.

Serves 4

The general outline for this recipe is from M.F.K. Fisher's 1968 book, "With Bold Knife and Fork." "Once, on Long Island," she wrote, "I saw jewel-like tiny potatoes lying in a newly plowed field, in late August, and I pulled off my shoes and plunged into the soft sandy dust and culled enough for a fine lunch. . . . Later I learned that I had embarrassed my hosts." 2 pounds fingerling or other small, varietal potatoes 6 cups water 1 1/2 tablespoons sea salt 4 tablespoons butter, softened to room temperature 1. Wash the potatoes and cover them with the water in a good, heavy saucepan. Cook over high heat until the potatoes can be easily poked with a fork, then drain off the water. 2. Add the butter. Shake the pan over the heat until the butter is melted and the skins of the potatoes have burst open, revealing their fluffy interiors. Print friendly version.

So he invited me out to the farm to see what was left of the summer's crop - root vegetables mostly, and a few hearty greens. We dug those potatoes and he set up a camp stove and we boiled them in well water and shook them with butter and that was the beginning.

Now I grow potatoes of my own: Red Bliss, White Rose and Yukon Gold. I love them. I look for them at farmers' markets when my own meager supplies have dwindled and I order them from wholesale distributors to keep the restaurant supplied. And I wonder why, for so long, have people grown only a few varieties, white Russet Burbanks mostly and a lot of red-skinned "new" potatoes like Red Pontiac and Sangre. The answer, of course, is high yield and reliability.

"Some Yukon Golds and various reds are being grown, and there's a few blue potatoes being grown in Skagit Valley," says Andrew Jensen of the Washington Potato Commission. "The vast majority of potatoes grown in Washington are the old familiar bakers."

The old familiar bakers, also commonly referred to as Idaho potatoes because so many of them are grown there, are actually "Russet Burbank" potatoes, named for that great Washingtonian plant breeder, Luther Burbank, who worked to develop a good, consistent high-yield potato. He achieved his goal in spades, and as one seed catalog put it, "If you think Idaho potatoes don't taste good, consider that the reason is too much chemical fertilizer and too much water - both applied to maximize yield."

That seed catalog, from Irish Eyes-Garden City Seeds, is one of the best sources of offbeat potato varieties I've ever seen. It can be ordered from P.O. Box 307, Thorpe, WA 98946, or by phone at 509-964-7000, or fax, 800-964-9210. The Web site is www.irish-eyes.com. I was introduced to the catalog by Wayne Ludwigson, executive chef at Ray's Boathouse, who says he remembers when oddball potatoes were hardly a blip on the produce radar screen.

"Six or seven years ago," he says, "no one was using fingerlings, or blues, or anything other than bakers or reds."

Now, I'm using fingerlings by the 40-pound box and blues by the bushel. So are other Seattle chefs, and people are loving them. Like heirloom tomatoes and fresh herbs, specialty potato varieties may find a foothold in the marketplace.

"It's one of the hopes, though, that these specialty potatoes will help growers out of the economic rut they're in," says Jensen of the Potato Commission. "Last year potato prices were horribly low. It's been going on, off and on, for the last 15 years. One reason is that the technology for storage is getting better. Keep 'em cool and keep good humidity, and you can be selling potatoes you harvested in August all the way through next July."

Of speciality potatoes, he says, "There's got to be a market before anyone will grow them. Everyone knows what to do with a baker, but most people don't know how to use the specialty varieties. So it's still a very, very small percentage of the overall crop."

This isn't the first time a lack of variety in the potato crop has presented growers a challenge. Some scholars contend that the 19th-century Irish Potato Famine, caused by a blight, could have been mitigated if more varieties had been planted in Ireland.

When an ill wind brought spores of the microscopic fungus to the shores of Ireland in the 1840s, Irish peasants were eating an average of 10 potatoes per person a day, and almost all of them were of the variety "Lumper," grown primarily because it produced a heavy yield. Some varieties of potato are resistant to the fungus. Others are resistant to other kinds of blight. Lumper potatoes were completely vulnerable.

These days, the blight facing potato growers is financial rather than fungal. And it seems ironic that this time the problem is caused by potatoes being resistant to rot.

If we could learn from history, we might start growing more varieties of potatoes and learning to enjoy a little more diversity in our produce. Greg Brickman, the gardener who introduced me to specialty potatoes, could have told me that years ago.

Greg Atkinson, Canlis executive chef, is the author of "In Season" (1997) and "The Northwest Essentials Cookbook" (1999) from Sasquatch Books.