Forty six hours in Paris now seems like an awful long time ago but looking back we seemed to have slipped in quite a lot for the brief time we were there. A couple of us almost went out for a night on the town before good sense prevailed and we realised that if we left it too late there would be no-one to let us back in to our apartment.

Breakfast both mornings was croissants, black coffee and fresh orange juice in good cafes. Some of the lustre was taken off the second cafe when we realised that the croissants were being brought over from a place across the road – maybe we should have gone there instead.

For our one full night there, Tuesday, there had been some posturing over who was going to have pick at where we went to eat for the evening. We both had our choices but I lost out on account of being too slow to get a table booked.

Although it wasn’t my pick the meal was very good – haddock ceviche, then breast of of duck and a plate of Brilliant-Savarin cheese flavoured with black truffle. The place was quiet and our waiter clearly enjoyed having us there – so much so he treated us all to a small glass of sweet apple liquor.

Afterwards we walked up the steps to the Sacre Coeur where a lone busker played Ed Sheerin songs surrounded by a coterie of foreign language students who slightly bizarrely thought this was all part of soaking up the atmosphere. Outside the church tall men offered us drugs for sale. Some of us got on so well with them they got a hug to say good night.

As we walked back to the apartment we passed a good looking bar on a corner. The doors and windows were open and it was filled with red light and the sound of good music.

The only son and I decided it was to early to be going to bed so we found a table in the bar by one of its open windows and started to work our way through the various beers they had on tap. Behind the bat they didn’t seem too bothered about us paying for our drinks and the music carried on being good and as we finished our third glass of beer we thought about another but as I have said already good sense prevailed.

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Easter Sunday seemed like a good excuse to make some incursions into the stock of freekah I bought last week in Oxford. Although we were there for less than a day I found time to scoot out to the Cowley Road and a small Moroccan shop that has an ability to stock the ingredients that I read about but can’t buy elsewhere.

I was tempted to cook a very large lump of lamb but knew that if I did that I would also have to make a suitably grand dish for the vegetarians so I decided to cook salmon instead.

I was able to pick up two good fillets from Wards on Saturday morning cut from the same fish.

Sunday morning there was a brief pomegranate crisis when it became apparent that those I had bought on Saturday morning were passed their use by date. All was solved with a quick dash down to The International Store.

The freekah was boiled for fifteen minutes and then mixed with a combination of chopped blanched almonds, barberries and pomegranate seeds.

New potatoes were boiled.

The sides of salmon were slathered in a mixture of good olive oil, lemon zest, turmeric and pepper. It only took twenty minutes to cook in a hot oven.

One of the joys of spending too much of the money I don’t have on new CDs and records is that occasionally I run out of money altogether and have to go back and listen to stuff that I have bought previously but did not give enough attention to first time round.

This evening it is the turn of Matmos and their album The Civil War from all the way back in 2002.  I found it lurking next door to a triple CD set of bawdy French music. We had the bawdy French music on for a while to remind us of Paris and then I thought I would give Matmos a go.

I suspect that I may have listened to it more this evening than I did first time round. Dreamy electronic pop. Something else to play in the cafe I am going to open which will feature on a daily basis the less heard parts of my music collection.

The last time a waitress took the trouble to warn me off what I was ordering for my meal I almost ended up in casualty. As it was I found myself getting more intimate with my friendly Polish GP than I might otherwise have felt comfortable. That was all down to a “super duper hot mackerel” curry I had to eat last September.

I am pleased to say that the after effects of the lunch I had in Paris were more benign.

We had spent a Tuesday morning wandering through the foothills of Montmartre which included coffee and croissants in a crowded cafe. We had then made the walk up the hill and skirting the crowds spent an hour in the Montmartre Museum. This included a recreation of an artist’s studio that was filled with light and posters and pictures going back to its glory days included grainy black and white pictures of the athletic looking women who dance the can can in the Moulin Rouge.

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We then walk down the other side of the hill and having refreshed ourselves with a drink in the sun (where we were waved back from sitting on too much of the pavement) we went in search of lunch. This was to be found in a bistro wedged up next to one of sets the stairs that take you either up or down the hill centred with a double metal hand rail.

We were shown into a room round the back with plush red leather seats and we settled down with our menus. Almost immediately I decided I would have the Andouillette especially as it was 5A rated (The Association Amicale des Amateurs d’Andouillette Authentique (AAAAA) ‘The Friendly Club of Lovers of Authentic Andouillette’ is a club formed by several food writers in 1970. It gives certificates (“diplôme”) to producers of high-quality andouillettes.)

The rest of the family ordered and it was then down to me. I put on my best French accent and asked for the “andouillette avec frites”. The waitress gave me a worried look and said something that sounded very much like “Are you sure?” as she rubbed her hand over her stomach to make it clear that what I would be eating would be made up of the stomach of something else.

I reassured her that I knew what I was doing.

It arrived twenty minutes and a pint of Pelforth later. A burnt dark sausage on a plate piled with chips. As I split the casing the folds of meat fell away leaving little doubt that it was made up of the intestine of pig. It came with an earthy farm yard smell which went well the bland crisp chips. I ate with relish.