Word: iles
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Voltaire once called it a home fit for a king - and for a few hundred years, it was. After the Hôtel Lambert was built in 1639 by architect Louis Le Vau on Paris's Ile Saint Louis, the mansion played host to French nobility, exiled Polish princes and members of the Rothschild family of banking fame. But for Qatari Prince Abdullah bin Khalifa al-Thani, who bought the property from the Rothschilds in 2007 for $88 million, the welcome has been far from regal...
...Hubig says. Change has even come to Cowgirl Tacos, Paris' sole Tex-Mex cooking school and caterer. Ever since chef Ellise Pierce tasted true Paris mushrooms grown in 19th century quarries, she has been stuffing her enchiladas with nothing else. She also plans to fill her Texas chili with Ile-de-France's centuries-old beans, the haricot de Soissons. The 18th century cultivators who made them famous could never have imagined the dishes the beans would end up in, but they'd be happy to know that Parisians are eating local once again...
...French gastronomy "was born in Paris," thanks to the myriad produce once widely grown in the city's immediate region, the Ile-de-France. But with postwar urbanization and the arrival of Nouvelle Cuisine in the late 1960s, with its emphasis on unusual and often foreign ingredients, the produce and recipes of Paris were all but lost. "There was a kind of brutal halt to la cuisine Parisienne," Alléno says...
...make the old recipes sing again, Alléno and Terroirs d'Avenir found the last producers of many of Ile-de-France's traditional vegetables, spices and meats: l'aspèrge d'Argenteuil, a sublime variety of violet-tipped asparagus, today produced by a single family; champignons de Paris, the mushrooms first grown in Paris catacombs (but today more often imported from China); Gâtinais saffron, once considered the world's finest; Mereville watercress; Pontoise cabbage; and Meaux-brie cheese...
...Under the plan, construction and business development will broaden economic and cultural activity from its current focus on the 1,130 sq. ft. (105 sq m) intra-muros Paris and its population of two million, and extend that to the 12 million-strong inhabitants of the surrounding Ile-de-France region (as a comparison, Greater London has a population of 8.5 million). In so doing, Greater Paris, it is hoped, would further boost the Ile-de-France's 30% share of French GDP with the creation of economic and research clusters producing synergies and new jobs...