He never became as famous in the Netherlands as his colleague and compatriot Donna Hay. And while there’s a chance that it’s only today that you’re hearing of Australian chef and cookbook author Bill Granger, who recently passed away at the age of 54, you’re probably familiar with his legacy. Have you ever sat in a café having breakfast at a large communal wooden table? Did you perhaps have a stack then? fluffy pancakes ordered some luxurious egg dish or avocado toast? Well, we more or less owe such café-indulgent breakfasts to Granger. It was not without reason that he was referred to as ‘The King of Breakfast’ in many articles about his death.
The story goes that the family in which Bill Granger grew up rarely or never ate together. His father was a butcher and was always working. His mother, who had a busy job in the fashion industry, was a vegetarian. “If we sat at the table together three times in my youth, that’s a lot,” Granger once said in an interview. He taught himself to cook from poverty at the age of five, first using recipe cards and later by devouring the books of Elizabeth David, among others.
His interest in cooking and the lack of enjoyable family meals led to the opening of his first breakfast and lunch cafe in a Sydney suburb, Bills, in 1993, which quickly became known for its relaxed, homely atmosphere and its extremely creamy scrambled eggs. Eighteen more cafes and restaurants would follow later, including in Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul and London, but Bills, with its gigantic communal table in the center of the room, still serves as the template for breakfast cafes around the world .
Granger also had an honorary title: ‘The Godfather of Avocado Toast’. Although he claims not to have invented the dish, he was the first to put it prominently on the menu. Toasted sourdough bread topped with a quartered ripe avocado, drizzled with lime juice and olive oil and sprinkled with salt, pepper and fresh coriander, that was all, but it became one of the most ordered dishes at bills. And the rest, as anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock for the past few years knows, is history.
As a small tribute to the Australian self-made chef, who was described as extremely nice and relaxed in every obituary that has appeared about him in recent weeks, I would like to make one of his signature dishes with you today. Not the avocado toast – although I actually already gave the recipe for it in a few sentences above, and not his creamy scrambled eggs, but check out the YouTube video where he demonstrates it – but a vegan alternative to that: tofu scramble with chili sambal.
It may seem like a somewhat overly laborious recipe, especially for a breakfast or brunch dish, but firstly, the end result is worth it and secondly, there are shortcuts possible. For example, you can replace the fresh sambal with sambal from a jar, for example a sambal badjak or assem. Secondly, instead of frying shallots yourself, you can use ready-made fried onions. That saves two of the four steps and means you can make the scrambled tofu within half an hour.
That said, I wish there was a Bills-like cafe around the corner from me where I could order these delicious non-eggs. I probably wouldn’t be able to stay away from that community table.