Guest Chef Peter Dewar’s sweet pea and lobster lasagna

Peter Dewar’s

While Peter Dewar

has enjoyed being competitive in both cooking and mountain biking, the latter has gotten him into at least one crappy situation in Switzerland. “I used to train in the mountains,” Dewar said. So, I used to take the train from Bern to Interlaken. From Interlaken, I used to ride to top of Grindelwald. It was a long ride. On one bright sunny day, I made my way up the mountain, and then I was descending back down into the valley. There was a farmer out spraying his field with liquid manure out of a hose. He turned around at the right moment and the wind was just right. It covered me in liquid manure, covered from head to toe and I had no way to get it off. I didn’t know what to do.

“I went back down to the train station. I had my ticket, but I stank. I couldn’t sit with the other passengers. So, I found a conductor and asked if I could sit in the baggage car. I couldn’t explain, in my broken Swiss German, why I was covered in shit. I went home in the baggage car and I had to smell myself for an hour, back to my house.” Dewar’s stay in Switzerland, almost 20 years ago, was actually more fertile for his two passions than fertilizer-filled. He had left the Maritimes to do his formal culinary apprenticeship at the Hotel Bern. (He was born in Montague, p. e. i., grew up in Riverview, N. B., and graduated from the Culinary Institute of Canada in Charlottetown.) He had previous racing experience in Canada that led him to connect with bmc’s mountain bike team. During the 1994 and 1995 seasons, he competed in the Swiss national circuit. He also competed in a couple of World Cups.

The act of balancing work and racing was quite gruelling. “In Switzerland, when you work in a hotel or a restaurant, usually you work from 9 a. m. to 1 p. m.,” he said. “Then you have a two-hour break and you’re back to work from 3 p. m. to 11 p. m. I would always ride my bike to work in the morning. I’d try to get out to train for two hours and then go back to work for the evening. On my days off, I’d go up to the mountains and do a lot of climbing. In races, I did OK. Mid-pack, I guess you’d say.”

After Switzerland, Dewar came back to Canada. While he continued to ride, his profession started to demand more and more of his time. But he brought his competitive side from the trails to the kitchen. Since 2004, Dewar has been in culinary competitions, which he confesses that he’s better at compared to mountain biking. In 2007 and 2008, he won the International p. e. i. Shellfish Chef Challenge. Also in 2008, he won the Canadian Culinary Federation’s National Chefs Challenge. At the 2012 World Culinary Olympics in Germany, the pinnacle of culinary competitions, he was part of Team Canada, which placed fourth out of 23 national teams. The team of six chefs had trained for four years and was happy with its performance.

Dewar is able to draw links between competing on the singletrack and in the kitchen, including endurance. “When we do the competitions, you have to be in decent shape to do it,” Dewar said. “You’re working long hours. You have to be mentally in shape , as well. There’s also having that desire to be the best you can be. You train to do food competitions too. It’s similar to cycling in that respect, just using a different set of skills.”

Today Dewar, who’s also busy as a culinary arts instructor at the Kingstec Campus of Nova Scotia Community College, gets out on his Cervélo R3 and full-suspension Trek Superfly when he can. “I’ll never be able to do what I used to do on a bike,” he said. He then added, “But never trust a skinny cook, right?”– 16 oz. lobster meat 1 1/2 cups whipping cream 1/4 cups (packed)

chopped fresh basil leaves 500 ml cottage cheese 1 lb. bag frozen peas, thawed 3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese 2 large eggs 1 tsp sea salt 12 no-boil lasagna noodles 4 cups

grated mozzarella cheese