Ilias’ recipe for reinvention

The ABC has celebrated award-winning Byron Bay dessert-maker Ilias Katsapouikidis

In 2003, Ilias Katsapouikidis was nearly killed while mining opals with his grandfather in the iconic South Australian town of Coober Pedy.

“We had all of these Greek sweets in the windows … with all of the locals and Aboriginal community coming in and eating baklava.”

The last thing he remembers about the accident, he told ABC reporter Samantha Turnbull, was a “white light” and the feeling of immense pressure on his body.

“I remember taking a few steps up the bottom ladder and then it was lights out for I don’t know how long,” says Ilias.

“[My grandfather] looked at my helmet and it was smashed to pieces, so a rock or something had hit me and knocked me unconscious.”

Airlifted by the Royal Flying Doctor Service to hospital in Adelaide, he spent time in a coma before weeks of recovery. To aid his recuperation he took up yoga, and as part of his long-term healing process, made the painful decision to return to Coober Pedy.

“I felt like I had to face my fears and trauma by going back, so I did another four years of hard toil.”

Back at the rockface, Ilias described those years as “character-building”; but something vital was missing.

“I thought ‘What’s going on here?’. I was supposed to be excited about finding this mystical, elusive gemstone, but I was thinking about making baklava and eclairs.”

So began a remarkable culinary odyssey. “I’d be whipping eggs at 11 o’clock at night. I was alive with energy when I was making sweets.”

Ilias took a job managing the kitchen of a local roadhouse, where he employed a group of Greek grandmothers to help.

“I hired them to do what they loved, not to make burgers and fries and wingdings.

“We had all of these Greek sweets in the windows … with all of the locals and Aboriginal community coming in and eating baklava.”

Energised by his cooking, Ilias looked to commercialise his interest in yoga, moving to Byron Bay to complete a yoga teacher-training course, and it was in northern NSW that Ilias’ prowess in the kitchen came to the fore.

“My girlfriend told me to take a tray of sweets to the local market, so I did.”

In the four years since, he’s won 19 medals at the Sydney Royal Fine Food Show for baklava, halva, nougat, pastelli, revani, sokolato, friands and tsoureki.

And while it may have taken three decades to make it into a business, the Kastoria-born chef says his passion for food had been there all along.

“We grew up near the Albanian border in a tiny village, and my earliest memories go back to Mum rolling filo pastry from scratch and grandmas being in the kitchen for hours and hours,” he said.

“And it was made from whatever they were growing at the time, it was all from scratch and it was a ceremonial way of life. It’s stayed with me.”

Ilias hopes his story can inspire others to rekindle the gifts of their heritage.

“Let’s do what was so natural for our parents and grandparents. My mother would have people over every weekend, sometimes hundreds of people, and she would be cooking for days with joy.

“It was a natural part of our lives.”

Source: ABC North Coast