Guest chef recipe: Bob Matthews’s Paris-Brest

International politics kept Bob Matthews out of cycling. The track rider had been preparing for years for the 1980 Games in Moscow. (“I had a grand illusion of being a team pursuiter,” said the self-effacing Calgarian.) The Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan and Canada’s subsequent boycott of the Games ruined things for Matthews and other Olympic hopefuls.

“I got a nice letter from the government,” Matthews said. “From there, they loaded us up on a bus and we went to the Wisconsin Milk Race. That was the consolation for not going to the Olympics.”

Matthews got his start in cycling in the early ’70s. He started riding on Calgary’s Glenmore Velodrome, when there weren’t cars on it. “I got a track bike, but often I couldn’t ride it because there were guys driving Mini Coopers on the asphalt track.”

After 1980, Matthews focused on cooking and completing his studies. In 1998, he achieved Olympic gold in Germany, grand gold in fact, at the Frankfurt Culinary Olympics as part of Team Alberta. In 2000, he was part of the Canadian team that took grand gold in the cold plate, food prepared only for presentation, in Erfurt, Germany.

Today, Matthews is encouraging his four children, who range in age from 10 to 16, to pedal. They are definitely big Cadel Evans fans. After the Tour of Alberta, BMC’s team car spent some time parked at Matthews’s home. “It was like having the Holy Grail in the garage,” he said. Matthews’s recipe is very cycling-centric fare that is served at his restaurant, La Chaumière: the Paris-Brest. “In the late 1800s, the dessert was created to commemorate the Paris-Brest-Paris race,” he said.

“It’s in the shape of a wheel. The original one was rather large, about the size of child’s trike wheel. We make individual ones.”

Step 1

Choux Pastry

Ingredients
250 ml water
200 g all-purpose flour
100 g butter, unsalted
4 eggs
1 egg yolk
100 g almonds, sliced blanched

Directions
1. In a saucepan, boil water and butter.
2. Remove saucepan from heat. Mix in flour. Stir vigorously until the mixture forms a ball.
3. Cool for 5 minutes. Mix in each egg one at a time.
4. Put the finished mix in a piping bag. Onto a large baking sheet, pipe one ring of dough roughly 3 1/2″ in diameter. Then, pipe another ring inside of first one, leaving a hole in the middle. Add one more ring on top of the two bottom rings. You should be able to make six pastries.
5. Brush each pastry with egg yolk and top with almonds.
6. Bake the pastries at 350 F for 30 minutes.
7. Let cool and slice each pastry horizontally.

Step 2

Praline/Butter Cream

Ingredients
8 egg yolks
250 g granulated sugar
250 ml water
250 g butter, unsalted softened
120 g praline paste (substitute peanut butter)
50 g icing sugar whip cream raspberry sauce

Directions
1. In a saucepan, mix granulated sugar and water. Boil until the mixture reaches what is called “soft-ball stage” syrup at a temperature of 250 F.
2. In a mixing bowl, whip egg yolks, and then add soft-ball-stage syrup.
3. Whip mixture at high speed until completely cooled, and then add butter gradually.
4. Fold in praline paste.
5. Put cream into a piping bag.
6. Onto the base of each choux pastry, pipe the cream. Then, place the tops of the pastries onto the cream surfaces.
7. Dust each pastry with icing sugar.
8. Serve each Paris-Brest with whip cream and raspberry sauce.

Nutritional Information
For one serving
Calories 1,100
Carbs 88 g
Saturated Fat 24 g
Fibre 5 g
Protein 19