Fasten your seatbelts. Right after the conclusion of the Rio Olympics, Peter Giannakis, an aspiring pastry chef at the age of 57, is convinced Australian TV is in for a ride.
Having just finished filming for Zumbo’s Just Desserts, which is set to air on Channel 7 in two weeks, Peter believes sweet tooths will be taken by storm.
“The show is incredible. It has been an amazing experience for me and all the contestants,” he tells Neos Kosmos.
“No exaggeration whatsoever, this show will surprise many famous pastry chefs. There is so much talent on Zumbo’s. All contestants have given their best and it exceeds all expectations.”
Zumbo’s Just Desserts centres around well-known pastry chef Adriano Zumbo, who is co-presenting it with UK celebrity chef Rachel Khoo, and gives contestants from all around Australia a chance to immerse themselves in the art of patisserie.
Melbourne-born and bred Peter Giannakis has tried his luck in several professions, being a designer and wholesaler of men’s garments as well as a store owner, who later on moved to car sales.
“At this present stage I’ve got a car sales firm but personally I haven’t sold a car for quite some time,” he explains.
“It’s never been the right thing for me, although I have been doing it successfully for many years. My true passion has always been cooking, and especially pastry-making.”
He admits he would rather be in a café serving slices of his legendary tiramisu that in an office. Deep down he had known that cooking and confectionery were his true calling since the age of eight, when his grandmother taught him how to make Greek pastries.
“I don’t think about cars at all, I just think about desserts and to tell you the truth, I’m 100 per cent certain food is where my future lies.
“If I had to pick one of my desserts it would be the tiramisu. I keep telling everybody I make the best tiramisu. I don’t think anybody can make a better tiramisu than me,” he laughs.
His wife Maria, to whom he has been married for more than 36 years, and his two children are more than supportive of his new venture. In fact his son Dean, 34, who inherited the same love for sweets, runs a successful roaming food cart selling Greek doughnuts and will join his father in his new business.
Acknowledging his aptness in sales in combination with the gift of the gab, Peter dreams of retailing his desserts to coffee shops and restaurants.
“We haven’t got a pastry shop yet but we will be establishing something like that in the next three or four weeks,” he says.
“Until now we’ve been working from home making samples, taking them to various restaurants. They’ve all expressed an interest in buying our cakes and desserts.”
Peter has come up with a concept he likes to call ‘dessert-on-a-stick’, an ice cream-like pastry on a skewer incorporating all the flavours and techniques of a dessert, only frozen.
“I’m very passionate about this dessert idea,” he says. “One of our specialities is black forest cake. All combined sponge cake, sour cherries and ice-cream, which is in fact frozen custard, on a stick.
“If you’re passionate about something and that’s what you’re dreaming of, that’s what you have to pursue.”
With his pastries, Peter loves to experiment predominantly with European dessert-making techniques. He occasionally fuses them with some of his favourite Greek flavours, creating titillating masterpieces.
“I use some Greek-related inspiration fused with Italian, French and Spanish flavours,” he says, adding that “sometimes Greek desserts are a bit too sweet”.
Greek cuisine, however, has always been a driver for him, since he learned a lot about food from his Greek grandmother and a cookbook he bought at the age of 15.
“I set about making everything in that book,” he says.
“And I haven’t stopped since.”
Meanwhile, his son Dean, who went to Greece for a holiday a few years back, saw that everyone was going crazy and lining up for loukoumades. The day he returned to Melbourne, he decided to open his own Greek doughnut joint.
“Dean came back and said, ‘Dad, can you show me how to make them’? Now he’s got a firm called St Jerry’s and he does Greek doughnuts, loukoumades. He loves it.
“My son is the reason I joined the show,” he reveals.
It was in fact Dean who saw Channel 7 representatives walking around at a Greek event and found out they were after potential contestants for a show they had in mind.
“My son then said ‘my father would be very, very good at that’, and here I am. Channel 7 got in touch with me, checked me out and asked me if I wanted to be part of the show.
“I said ‘yes by all means’,” he enthuses.
As the oldest contestant in the competition, Peter is banking on his experience and palate to set him apart.
“I understand flavours and how things should be done,” he says.
“Most of the desserts I make, I do very well. I would have loved 20, 30 years ago to have been doing this, because I honestly think that I would have taken the world by storm. Just wait and see.”
* The reality dessert-making TV series Zumbo’s Just Desserts will headline Channel Seven’s magic Monday programming when it premieres on August 22.