Photo by Patricia Niven
I don’t very often feature restaurant cookbooks here, feeling that they rarely have anything to say to the home cook. I make an exception now for Ester for many reasons, chief among them the fact that Ester is not simply one of my favourite restaurants in Sydney, but one of my favourite restaurants anywhere in the world. In dim moments, I relive the lunch I had there last, in May, drawing comfort from the memory of each mouthful, and wallowing again in the particular joy that comes from eating at a truly exceptional restaurant. I’m enraptured by Chef Mat Lindsay’s food. As I wrote on the first of three posts about that lunch at Ester, Australians seem to have a special talent for creating pomp-free, laid-back restaurants with extraordinarily good food. ‘Good” may not sound like the highest praise, but really good food can stop you in your tracks. Lindsay’s food does this. To quote myself again, if I may: he’s a true genius, although that word is used so often, it’s become meaningless. But his particular mixture of palate, talent, sensibility, and devotional concentration is rare. Pat Nourse has, with Lindsay, captured this with such warmth, extending an encouraging hand to those of us in our kitchens at home. And the photography by Patricia Niven is just ravishing.
If you’re looking for a book that gives you breezy suggestions for quick and easy dinners then, no, this is unlikely to be the book for you, but if you want inspiration and to be offered an insight as to how to coax flavour into food, and an understanding of what cooking can be, and how to achieve this, then you are certain to greet this book with as much grateful glee as I do.
Yes, there’s plenty in the book that is full-focus project cooking — with understandable emphasis, given the menu there, on cooking on a wood fire — but plenty that isn’t. There are so many recipes I know and love through eating at Ester, and long to revisit at home, though I shall confine myself to a shortlist with great restraint: their fudgy Malted Sourdough; the divinely buttery Yemeni bread, Malawach; the Steak Tartare of dreams; the justly celebrated Blood Sausage Sanga; Orange, Witloof (that’s chicory to us!) and Fennel Salad; Chicken-Fat Butter (I mean!); Sticky-Date Doughnut with Diplomat Cream; and Crêpe Brulée. And let me just shout out some of the recipes that I’ve yet to order there, but plan to cook here: Cheddar Pie; the Burnt Pickle Plate; Roast Cauliflower with Almond and Sauce and Mint; Potato Pasta; Calamari and Lardo Skewers; Potato Galette, Roast Spatchcock Chicken with Garlic-Bread Sauce; and — I don’t have to be asked twice! — Salted Caramel Semifreddo.
But the recipe that I’ve chosen from it to share with you today is for their luscious Roasted Mango.
Ester: Australian Cooking by Mat Lindsay with Pat Nourse (Murdoch Books, £30).
Photography by Patricia Niven.
