We have a new bench in the house.

It arrived Tuesday evening on the back of a van that had come from somewhere in Belgium. It then spent 48 hours in the basement before being assembled this morning.

It is looking very smart in the kitchen although it will make itself useful outside at some point. Perhaps when the snow has melted.

In the meantime Christmas has been and gone and we have in the basement a large plate of cold capon.

Is there any better job for a man than picking the meat from a roasted bird. A small sharp knife is essential but then it is all a master of nimble fingers and picking away at the bones until there is nothing left. This one had been stuffed with dried figs and cherries, walnuts and onions, and a good few dashes of San Miguel. Cook’s treats were a suck at the bones.

This time last year we were in Spain and I was putting myself back together after an evening drinking too much Patxaran ready to go out shopping in the local town to buy up the ingredients to make a great dish of lamb stewed in honey and roast potatoes. I had tried to tempt the family into the idea of a couple of suckling pigs but the more tender hearted weren’t going for it.

This year tried to tempt the family into a Persian themed Christmas meal but they weren’t having it either I will be slipping down to Birkenhead for a bird to roast and the vegetables to go with it. There are already some sprouts downstairs and bags of two different types of potatoes. I will be picking the bird up from Wards and I might see if they have some oysters as well.

Don’t tell the family but the bird may have a Persian themed stuffing.

Earlier in the week there was some potentially fatal confusion over the buying of cheese in Lunya. I wanted some Vacherin Mont d’Or type cheese, soft to dip into, so I asked if they had any. Peter nodded his head and picked from the shelf a bottle of Patxiran. Now there is an arguement that a man cannot have too much Patxiran in his life but there are at least three bottles of the stuff lurking in the basement and the memory of the last night I had drinking the stuff is still raw. A cigar might have been involved.

We cleared up the confusion and I came away with a small soft cheese made with ewe’s milk. It is in the fridge downstairs nesting up to a Gubben whose used by date might have passed a couple of months ago and has taken over the tang of well rotted grass. I am looking forward to getting stuck into that.

I bought some bottled Navarro beans to go with some sausages.

We had them last night. The sausages had come all the way from Bridgnorth swaddled in newspaper. For the beans I sweated some bacon in a large pan, as it started to give off its fat I added onions, garlic and a few scrapings of chilli. Once the onions were golden I dolloped in a spoonful of thick black treacle. That cooked for a minutes and then beans and tomatoes were stirred in.

They were all very good together. Followed by a bottle of Zot.

I spent a bit of time this weekend with one of my brothers-in-law and somewhere along the way we got to talking about Iranian food. He has an old friend, Kodi, and there is a story about how Kodi’s mother makes the best ever rice and there was another dish she made with chicken and walnuts that was cooked for eight hours.

All that talking was done whilst tasting our way through a selection of fine real ales including a Christmas Beer that was dark, sweet and heavy enough to lift you off your feet.

I had a go at some Iranian Rice this evening – this time with herbs. There is not much that is difficult or complicated about the cooking of good rice. It just needs a bit of time.As soon as you start to hurry through the process you are done for and will end up with a plate of white mush.

The herbs were a mixture of coriander, dill, mint and tarragon, all chopped fine.

I cooked the rice in boiling water for five minutes until it just ad some bite left. Greaseproof paper was then put in the pan, butter melted and the rice layered on top with the herbs. You should then wrap a tea-towel around the lid but I just use a couple of pieces of kitchen roll. The last time i tried it with a tea-towel we had a fire.

After 40 minutes on the lowest possible heat the rice came out perfectly cooked with a golden crusty bottom.

We ate it with chicken that had been stuffed with a mixture of dried figs, dried cherries, barberries and walnuts.

In the meantime I have had a taste at the homebrew. Probably not as good as the beer we were drinking last night.

A telephone is a very intimate way to communicate. And when you spend an hour with one clamped to your ear being talked through the various steps needed to get the house connected again to the wi-fi and internet you develop a strange relationship with the voice on the other end. I didn’t quite catch his name but in the one of the lulls that occurred as we waiting for something to reboot we established that he was in India where it was clear and hot and and I was in Birkenhead where it was grey, cold and windy. We were both looking forward to Christmas.

When at last the blue line moved and the BBC News homepage flickered up on the screen we could have hugged each other down the line.

Elsewhere I have been seduced again by the nice men in Probe. There are two things in a a record shop I find difficult to resist. The first is some good music playing in the background, good enough for me to ask what it is, and the second is a hand written label that someone has taken the trouble to write out telling me just how good a record is.

I knew I had at least one album by The Dirtbombs and a label that reads “Thee amazing sunshine pop/bubblegum rock album from Mick Collins and his Detroit legends” is a must have.

It was good to discover that I have at least one other album by the Dirtbombs and we have been listening to all three of them all day. Greased up scuzzed rock’n’soul with added bubblegum and fuzzed up guitars.

For lunch we had steak trenchers. Two good steaks fried quickly and laid on top of a couple of thick pieces of toasted bread with the juices and a few sliced onions.

And look at the sprouts we got!