The only problem I had with last night’s grouse was a lifelong aversion to bread sauce.

I set about all the cook books in the house and all they could offer me was roast grouse with bread sauce. Most of them provided some reassurance that this would be the best bit of game bird I could hope to eat and a couple offered variations in the form of game chips but at the end of the day all of them insisted on the bread sauce.

There only other possible option was to make a grouse flavoured soup but this involved the use of a carcass and I was hoping to do some eating of the thing before that.

Having put all the cook books to one side I ventured out on my own.

This involved stuffing a clove of garlic, some thyme and sage into the bird and then layering it with ham. It was seasoned with salt, pepper and a dose of olive oil.

Once in the roasting pan I shoved three large mushrooms up against the bird.

It all then went into very hot oven for half an hour.

At this stage I took time out to fill up a glass and play some loud music.

Once the half hour was up the loud music was turned down and I took the bird out of the oven. All seemed okay. So I tipped over a ladle of flaming brandy and gave it five minutes to settle while I fried some bread.

It was all then a matter of assemblage.

The fried bread was put on the plate, followed by the three mushrooms and on top of this was perched the grouse surrounded by rocket salad.

It tasted very good.

The possibility of soup was usurped by a cat that had its own designs on the carcass!