Con Petidis awoke before 3am on Sunday and began preparing a meal according to his great-grandmother’s recipe.
The dish is called fasolatha, a Greek-style bean soup, and he continued cooking until he had three barrels of the chunky stew to share with fellow Macedonian expats who migrated to Australia from the town of Florina in north-western Macedonia.
“It took me from 3am until 10am on Sunday,” Mr Petidis, 75, said.
The occasion was the Florinian Fasolatha Festival, which has been celebrated in South Morang since 1992.
More than 1000 people attended the Sunday event to dance to traditional Greek music and taste traditional Florinian foods such as olives, breads, gyros, souvlakis, kebabs and, of course, bean soup.
