The "10th Gourmand World Cookbook Awards" honoured one outstanding book from Ireland. "Irish Oyster Cuisine" by Mairin Ui Chomain received an Honorary Mention as one of the 3 Best Fish and Seafood Book in the world for 2004.

It is published by A and A Farmar from Dublin.

Thanks to the award, more international readers will discover Irish oysters and a great author, with excellent recipes.

The book was chosen from 5,000 food and wine books published in 2004 and entered for the awards. It was the one book wanted by the Minister of Culture and Education of Sweden, Leif Pagrovtsky, and for everybody one of the top books in the Exhibition.

September is a great month to reacquaint yourself with that most Irish of bivalves, the oyster. Wash them down with a pint of the black stuff, or take inspiration from Mairin Ui Chomains award-winning book, Irish Oyster Cuisine, beautifully photographed by Walter Pfeiffer (A&A Farmar, €14.99). There are a host of fabulous recipes to choose from, including oyster and Guinness beef pie, and oysters with black pudding, honey and apple, interspersed with the recipes are fascinating historical facts, while a tangibly salty taste of Mairins native Connemara permeates.

Thousands of oysters will be consumed this weekend as part of the Galway International Festival, but it is doubtful there will be a thought given to their humble origins as a staple food during Famine time.

Today, the oyster is revered as an aphrodisiac and a decadent delicacy, but there is no disputing that it is a luxury food and is priced accordingly.

While revellers suck the raw oyster meat from their half shells in the Festival Marquee at Nimmos Pier, a new oyster cookbook written by a Connemara woman is being launched around the corner in the Kilkenny Design Cafe on High Street.

Irish Oyster Cuisine is a dream come true for Mairin Uí Chomáin, a native of Carraroe whose life has come full circle with her recent move to Galway.

Mairin started her cooking career as a home economics teacher but by then she already had a good base through the culinary habits of her native seaside village with their love of the sea and all things marine, not least the food opportunities it yielded.

In those days anything from the sea was fair game-from carrigeen to all types of fish and shellfish, including oysters which were in abundance in their natural habitat until overfishing depleted their stocks. Nowadays, most oysters consumed are farmed.

Not everyone likes the oyster, at least not in its raw state but Mairin has plenty of recipes to not only whet the appetite but satisfy it. The cover of the beautifully produced book features a photograph of a mouth-watering oyster and Guinness beef pie.

The book, published by A&A Farmar, is not her first cookbook-Mairin has written bi-lingual cookbooks before to accompany her series for RTE television, Cuisine le Mairin, and another for children won the Bisto award, but this project is one particularly close to her heart. "I have always dreamed of doing this book. I have always been drawn to the sea and its food and one on oysters, on Galway natural oysters, was a book I always had on the back burner. There is precious little written about oysters in Ireland though they have been eaten for centuries.

"They are delicious served raw but I wanted to share their versatility, to show how they can be added to so many dishes. I've also included a few little oyster related stories and photographs, which makes it entertaining as well as practical."

Its obvious that Mairin balances the two to advantage in all aspects of her life. The mother of four grown up children, she admits her figure today is probably better than ever but she stresses that she loves her food and that her saving grace is a lack of a sweet tooth.

She has lived in the United States, where she worked in Cornell University, and in Dublin, but remained a regular visitor to Connemara and Roscam, where her family, the Mac Con Iomaires and her husband Patricks family, the Cummins, live.

Having worked and reared her family in Dublin, she was delighted to get the opportunity two years ago to move to Roscam into her dream home, where she wrote and researched her dream book.

Her tips to anyone designing a kitchen is to have plenty of light in it and easy access to appliances. She admits she had great fun road-testing her new oyster recipes and tweaking old recipes in her new kitchen overlooking Galway Bay.

"That beautiful view was bound to inspire me and it did," she says though it is plain to see that she is a good self motivator and a go getter who would no doubt get inspiration in a windowless basement.

Her career has been varied but it has always centred around food and teaching or at least the sharing of culinary skills. At one time, her work with BIM had her teaching fishermen how to fare for themselves out at sea, no doubt using their catch.

Her adaptable personality made her a natural choice for RTE when seeking a presenter for a bi-lingual cooking programme and she admits that she is just at home in a TV studio as she is doing a cookery demonstration for BIM.

During the mid nineties, she toured Ireland judging meals cooked by people in their own kitchens under the Guess Who's Coming to Dinner competition run through newspapers and sponsored by Stanley, makers of ranges.

The move to Galway was always on the cards for Mairin and Patrick but it hardly means retirement for either of them. He continues to be involved in research for third level colleges while Mairin continues to be involved in one culinary project or another, though her persuasive skills could well see her broadening her horizon to non-culinary projects.

Irish Oyster Cuisine was sponsored by NDP, the EU, Galway Rural Development Ltd, BIM, and Foras na Gaeilge, as it is bi-lingual, though all the recipes are in English.

Black-and-white and colour photographs illustrate Irish Oyster Cuisine, a compendium of versatile oyster recipes presented by the mastermind behind the acclaimed "Cuisine le Mairin" and "Encore Cuisine le Mairin" television programmes for RTE. Although the recipes in Irish Oyster Cuisine are in English only, accompanying brief anecdotes, notes, miniature biographies and city descriptions are in both English and Gaelic. Mouth-watering dishes include Oyster and Mushroom Soup, Steamed Beer Oysters, Colcannon Cake with Oyster and Sausage Bouchees, and so many more. A painstakingly flavourful and easy-to-follow cookbook brimming with passionate zest for Irish cookery and culture. Highly recommended for personal cookbook collections.