For a while there was a possibility that the highlight of the week was going to be the arrival early yesterday evening of a Black & Decker Dust Buster. There is a lot of dust in the house that needs busting and this simple time saving device seemed to be the way to go about it.

Fortunately before the evening got too far advanced I remembered I had a second partridge down in the basement that needed eating. Partridges always come in twos. The first had been eaten last Friday stewed in white wine with a finely chopped carrot.

Last night’s partridge, after some rifling of pages in old Spanish cookbooks, got cooked with an apple.

The partridge was stuffed with a clove of garlic and some rosemary and went into a hot oven.

Whilst it cooked a finely chopped onion was browned in oil. I then added a plump apple taken from the garden, skinned, cored and cubed.

The garden is full of apples and another year seems to be going by with me thinking about buying a cider press but never quite getting round to it.

Once the partridge was cooked it was taken out of the oven and its juices added to the stewing apple and onion. It was left for a few minutes whilst I went back in the basement to find something I could set fire to.

I found a bootle of something the top of which had been sealed with sticky tape some 20 years ago. It did the job and produced some satisfying flames. Once they had died down I stirred in a couple of good slugs of cider and then finished off the bottle ( the cider – not the fiery stuff – otherwise I would still be down back against the floor!)

As the cider cooked down the partridge was tipped in to take on some of the flavour and I seasoned it well with salt and pepper.

I ate it with some fried potatoes and and handful of rocket. It was very good listening to Hannah Peel.

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!