Australian cuisine: Bill Granger gets it better than almost anyone

What is Australian cuisine? Expat Bill Granger has the recipe.

Chef Bill Granger. Picture: Supplied

With a cover design that cleverly, but perhaps paradoxically, references Miro (why not an Australian artist?), Bill Granger – the scrambled eggman, the smashed avo kid – has tackled that hardy perennial of national cultural conversation: what is Australian food? Kind of.

The design of his new book is by a London studio; it was written in England, about Australian tucker. So Australian Food is in effect an English book by an expat author, and to be honest, my first, gut reaction was an entree-sized serve of scepticism. Granger, the quintessential Sydneysider (even though he’s from Melbourne originally), is a professional expat of the Greer/Humphries/Robertson school dealing in ricotta (hotcakes) instead of rhetoric.

But a quick flick through the book is enough to remind one why, for example, Humphries’ observations on Australia and Australians are so often profound: perspective. And with the perspective Granger has from that distance, what he presents here as his vision of “Australian food” shows remarkable clarity. Bill gets it better than almost anyone.

“I have always believed Australia serves the sort of food that brings people together – over coffee, over communal tables, over all-day menus – and makes us all feel good,” he writes. “And I don’t think it’s just the food – it’s the way we eat and serve it. There’s always been a casualness about Australian eating ... because of some lucky stars and gratifying quirks of fate, the world seems to have embraced the Aussie way of eating.”

Granger’s story in food is well known, from a cheap Darlinghurst all-day breakfast joint in 1993 to three bills in Sydney, four in Japan and one each in Hawaii and Seoul. Plus four Granger & Co cafes in London. I don’t know what the business model is but regardless, it’s one helluva top effort. And with a mission statement of “taking a bit of Australian sunshine (and great coffee) wherever we go” Granger has clearly thought a lot about Australian food’s unique appeal.

“I don’t think it’s just the food – it’s the way we eat and serve it. There’s always been a casualness about Australian eating.”

“The menu also changed, of course, because we’d research the local palate, adding flavours and dishes to fit the sense of place,” he writes of his incursion to new lands. “And then in turn we brought these new favourite flavours home and added them to our Australian melting pot, so we can all enjoy yuzu curd on our breakfast loaf in Darlinghurst, dumplings filled with ricotta and kimchi in Surry Hills and raw tuna poke bowl in Bondi.”

So it’s Granger who’s responsible for the poke thing. Hmmm. Anyway, Australian Food is a kind of manual for living the Bill Granger Lifestyle: the sun is always shining, the Bronte rock pools sparkling, the granola crunchy, the optimism boundless.

The recipes are great, numerous and, I think, highly representative of where we are at today, from chilli miso salmon with hot and sour eggplant to prawn, XO (sauce) and chorizo fried rice. Influences from all over, mash-ups everywhere.

Aussie food? There’s not a meat pie recipe in sight, mate, but there’s a cracking braised lamb ragu with tagliatelle, and as a kid who grew up on spaghetti and lamb chops (not together) and now considerably older than the Australian median age of 37.9, I reckon it’s highly representative of Australian food today. Particularly given the ragu – made with a shoulder of lamb on the bone – has a few Greek flourishes, such as fresh oregano and a garnish of lemon zest.

The full recipe (see p30) is dead easy: brown a lamb shoulder, add a bunch of stuff, put it in the oven for a long time and serve. More or less. Make your pasta. OK, you don’t have to, but it’s therapy: 300g fine semolina, 100g tipo 00 flour, two whole eggs, eight yolks, a pinch of salt, a dash of oil and, possibly, a dash of water. Mix, knead, rest, roll, cut and cook it, and add to the ragu. Garnish with parsley, zest and pecorino (which, with all due respect to Australian cheesemakers, will need to be Italian) and Bob’s your PM, or was. Bloody beauty.

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