Dijon is to mustard what Wellington is to boots. And tough-as-old boots is what the beef was like that went into the first Boeuf Bourguignon. Faced with an inedible lump of 95% beef gristle, an enterprising Burgundy chef decided to cook it very slowly in red wine until it was really sorry. After 3 days in the pot, the lump of gristle relented. This contingency recipe for intractable steak was adopted and made famous by France's celebrity chef, the Delia of Dijon, Auguste Escoffier. Escoffier, the Nigella of Nîmes (I could go on), also created the Peach Melba in honour of the Australian soprano Dame Nellie Peach. Escoffier's last job was at the London Carlton, where one of his pastry students was the future Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh (the Sophie Grigson of Saigon).
Which bring us on to Gustave Eiffel, who built the General Post Office in Ho Chi Minh City. Gustave was born in Dijon. His family name was not originally Eiffel, but one of Gustave's ancestors changed it to Eiffel because he was fed up with the French mispronouncing his real name - Bönickhausen. Inseparable from his Meccano from an early age, Gustave went on to build a tower in Paris, the railway station in Santiago and the gas works in La Paz, Bolivia. He also provided the internal structure for New York's Statue of Liberty. You can read about the oedipal inspiration behind the Statue of Liberty in our Alsace blog.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
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