“Iron Chef,” Canadian Running, July 2014

Running Celebrity
Iron
Chef
Top Chef Canada’s
Connie de Sousa
90
Canadian Running
July & August 2014
By Valerie Howes
I’m looking at Instagram with Connie de Sousa in the Green
Room at the Marilyn Denis Show CTV studio in Toronto. She’s
here competing to be Marilyn’s next food expert. With her blow
out, TV makeup and sweeping lashes, the 33-year-old celebrity
chef is barely recognizable as the fresh-faced girl with sweatdrenched ponytail in her race photos. Different look, same drive.
At six months pregnant, she’s as focused cooking before millions
on television as training for her first Ironman.
Most Canadians know her as the ex-ballerina on Top Chef
Canada, who could debone a pig’s head in 40 seconds. She made
the finals in Season 1 – a feat no woman contender has since
achieved. Last year at the prestigious Terroir Awards, de Sousa’s
industry peers recognized her as “Canada’s most outstanding
chef.” To Calgarians, she’s the sausage aficionado at Charcut
Roast House, which she co-runs with her mentor, John Jackson,
who hashtags himself #TheOtherChef on Twitter, because it’s
Connie de Sousa people ask for by name.
With their spouses, the kitchen partners bought their 110-seat,
meat-centric restaurant five years ago. It’s inside Le Germain, a
luxury boutique hotel in downtown Calgary, and draws highprofile diners from Mayor Naheed Nenshi to William Shatner.
When Charcut opened, de Sousa and Jackson would arrive at
9 a.m. and leave up to 20 hours later, seven days a week. “We
poured every last penny of our savings into our restaurant,” she
says, “so we had the mentality of working like our lives depended
on it.” It paid off. In 2015 they’re opening a second place: Charbar,
occupying all three floors of the former Simmons factory, by the
Bow River.
Somehow de Sousa consistently found time to run 10k a day.
“I’ll get out in my neighbourhood, Killarney, or along the reservoir in Glenmore Park, as long as the temperature doesn’t drop
below -10 C,” she says. “Being in the fresh air gives me a clear
head for work.”
Last year, the chef decided to take it to the next level and train
for a triathlon. “The hours I can push through in the kitchen help
me as an athlete,” she says. De Sousa began mixing up her runs
with cycling and swimming training, but not without facing
some struggles. “At one point I was doing 90k bike rides before
my shift, so I’d be up at 5 a.m. I did get tired, and my co-chef was
getting a little frustrated – as was my husband, who wasn’t seeing
me much.” Luckily, both were supportive overall.
Swimming was even harder: “I never made it past Maroon
as a kid, because I couldn’t do front crawl properly,” she says,
laughing. During her first open-water swim at the Elbow Valley
triathlon, de Sousa was terrified: “With everyone starting at the
same time there was so much white water. I was getting kicked in
the head and elbowed, and I was choking,” she says. “I forgot all
my training and was just paddling to stay afloat.”
For the rest of the summer, the chef switched to training in
lakes. It paid off at her last tri of the season in Invermere, B.C.
“We swam in this gorgeous lake that was warm and crystalclear, with the mountains as a backdrop,” she recalls. “I felt
Running Celebrity
RECIPE
Cauliflower,
Feta and
Sultana Salad
Serves 4
92
Nutrition Information
(per serving)
Calories. . . . . . . 489
Fat. . . . . . . . . . . 22 g
Carbohydrates. 58 g
Sugar . . . . . . . 51 g
Protein . . . . . . . 15 g
Sodium . . . . . . . 705 mg
Ingredients
Directions
1 head of cauliflower
1 cup (250 ml) sultanas
8 oz. (225 g) feta cheese, crumbled
½ cup (125 ml) plain yogurt
½ cup (125 ml) sour cream
1 cup (250 ml) white wine vinegar
¼ cup (60 ml) fresh herbs (such as
tarragon, basil, oregano, dill
or mint), chopped
salt and pepper to taste
Sprinkling of pumpkin seeds
1.Wash cauliflower, cut it into
florets and place into a large bowl.
2.Add sultanas and crumbled feta
cheese.
3.In a jug, whisk plain yogurt and
sour cream, white wine vinegar
and chopped fresh herbs.
4.Pour dressing over ingredients
in bowl, toss to coat evenly and
season with salt and pepper.
5.Arrange salad on a platter and
sprinkle with pumpkin seeds.
Canadian Running
July & August 2014
Eat clean, but let yourself indulge once or twice
a week.
Instead of frying foods in fat, grill them – ideally
over a wood-burning flame for extra smoky flavour.
If you do want to fry, use duck fat; it has less cholesterol than hydrogenated oils and tastes delicious.
Eat humanely-raised animals, free from
hormones and antibiotics. Animals that live happy
lives not only taste better, they’re better for you.
Use flavoured olive oils on your salad with a little
citrus juice or vinegar, instead of store-bought
dressing.
Eat fish at least once a week. At Charcut we grill
it whole on the bone and season simply with salt,
pepper, olive oil and fresh herbs.
Enjoy full-fat dairy products like sour cream and
cheese in moderation and avoid low-fat dairy products, as they’re often packed with sugars.
Photo: Food Stylist: Susan Benson Cohen
Connie de Sousa taste-tests
rich, meaty dishes all day as
part of her job, so she factors
that into her daily calorie count.
This is one of her favourite
healthy and delicious dishes.
Connie de Sousa’s Tips for the Health-Conscious Gourmand
Marketplace
»
Photo: Lone Tree Photography
Above Connie de Sousa
racing the 2013 Tri-Diva Tri
in Olds, Alta.
»
Below de Sousa gets
down to business in the kitchen
really comfortable and I had
this great sense of accomplishment at completing a swim six
times the distance of my first
one that year.”
With her firstborn coming
soon, de Sousa is still training,
but she has cut her runs down
to 5k and is allowing herself
to run-walk. Her first postbaby goal is fittingly a Tough
Mudder, this September, and
her co-chef Jackson – an absolute beginner – has signed up
too. “He’s seen this new trend
of chefs getting in shape and he
has his own little girl to look
out for, so fitness has become
all the more important to him.”
By 2016, de Sousa plans to
be ready to take on that first
Ironman, in Florida. Her
strategy? “When I need to
push myself, I just swear and
tell myself to move faster,” she
says. “That’s when the kitchen
mouth comes in handy.”
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