AS soon as you meet Margaret Browne you say to yourself, here is the sort of woman who knows all things. She would be the woman who would be the Calor national housewife of the year, you say, she would scoop a Galtee prize for the best breakfast, cooked in her lovely farmhouse, Ballymakeigh House, just outside Killegh, in east Cork. Of course, she would get a gong from McDougall's for "breaking the mould of Irish baking".

And when you hear that Margaret Browne has written a book of her recipes from Ballymakeigh and published it herself, you find yourself saying, well, of course.

She is one of those women you find here and there throughout the country. They have families, they work farms, they run bed and breakfasts, they most likely organise their local political party and, somehow, some way, they then find time to write recipe books. If their energy and commitment weren't so inspiring, you would find them exhausting. How can they possibly achieve so much?

"When I got married, I was totally uninterested in food. When I was a nurse, I only ever went to the chip shop. It never occurred to me to cook," Margaret Browne says. "I used to ring my mother and say `I have a chicken here. What do I do with it?'."

"When we were married, I cooked rashers and eggs every evening. Every evening. Cooking was a chore." So what happened? How did a woman whose cooking at Ballymakeigh House is so celebrated, and whose book contains so many inventive and eclectic recipes, discover the one true path?

In Through My Kitchen Window, Margaret Browne tells how she began with deception - realising that her husband Michael would soon no longer tolerate the eggs and rashers, she bought frozen prepared food - but then suddenly a couple of cookery classes in Cork and Youghal opened her eyes. "I started to cook recipes and I realised that cooking was a science. It's about timing and measuring, and that fascinated me. It still excites me."

More courses and more cookery books followed, but it was one short cookery course with Gerry Galvin of Drimcong House in Moycullen, Co Galway, back in 1990, which was the elixir. "He changed my whole idea of cooking. I saw a real chef at work, and I was fascinated. It was like being transported onto another planet," she says. "My whole cooking changed. I realised that you could put anything with anything. My cooking improved, I would say, 300 per cent."

But the secret of Ballymakeigh House is not just the cooking, but the alliance of good cooking with great hospitality. I once received a letter from a chap who had stayed at Ballymakeigh for a Valentine's weekend. One morning, he happened to mention that hot oysters and roast duck were his favourite foods. That night, that is exactly what he was served for dinner. In tandem with all her other gifts, Margaret Browne runs the kind of place which fulfills your dreams.

And that she has now turned to writing her recipes as well as cooking them is no surprise. "I have to have buzz," she says. "I have to have something to do, I need something which is new and challenging." The challenge for the last year has been putting together Through My Kitchen Window.

Arranged as a diary of seasonal dishes, the idea began simply with her guests' continual requests for her recipes. A booklet was planned, but gradually developed into the book. Wisely, Ms Browne pays homage to both seasonality and balance. "Each of the menus is balanced, so they feature colon and texture, and they change with the seasons," she says.

As a cook, she finds her own preferences gravitate towards savoury cooking - starters, soups and main courses - but a particular passion is for ice creams.

Made by hand - "I always do things the hard way!" - they are one of the glories of the house, and the book gives a smattering of her favourites, though she has 25 different recipes for ices.

It makes for a friendly book, easy to use thanks to a clever lay out which means a recipe never goes over the page, but what is important about Through My Kitchen Window is the fact that it takes the writing of recipes out of the professional sphere, and back into the domestic environment. Instead of a professional cook shaping ideas for the home kitchen, here is a domestic cook writing for domestic cooks, and it is this logic which gives the book its singularity and its true voice.

In celebrating domestic cooking, the book also celebrates Margaret Browne's patiently acquired skills. Through My Kitchen Window is, in many ways, the story of the education, and the creation, of a fine cook.