Since opening his backstreet Chippendale restaurant Ester a decade ago, Sydney owner-chef Mat Lindsay has made a name for his fire-driven cooking and seasonal precision.

In celebration of the anniversary, he’s released a collection of some of his best and most well-known recipes.

The cult cauliflower, blood sausage sanga, burnt pav and fermented potato bread are all included, alongside some of Lindsay’s personal favourites and more accessible dishes.

“Keep tasting,” Lindsay writes in his cookbook. “At the end of the day, taste is what we’re looking for when we cook. Texture, body and that ever-unsettling word, mouthfeel, each have their own importance, but ultimately, it’s all about flavour.”

Here, Lindsay shares four recipes anyone can make at home.

Roast cauliflower with almond sauce and mint

This was the first thing we put on our first menu at Ester. In Sydney at the time, a cauliflower was considered dreary and was often lifeless and usually overcooked. The idea of roasting it whole or in halves and serving it all burnt, gnarly and handsome was far less familiar than it is now, and it was the thing that everyone initially came to the restaurant to order.

The cauliflower took on a life of its own. Multiplying and mutating. We sold so many that eventually the relationship between us soured. I became weary of the beast and tried to strike it from the menu. The first booking that came that first cauliflowerless night sat down, read the menu, then summoned the waiter to ask about the cauliflower. When they received the bad news, they promptly stood up and walked out.

INGREDIENTS

• whole cauliflower
• 2 litres (8 cups) 2 per cent salt brine (see below)
• extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling
• juice of ½ lemon
• 50g (1 cup) mint leaves (I like round mint for this)
• 80g (½ cup) roasted almonds, chopped roughly

Almond sauce

• 100g (1 cup) almond meal
• brown rice vinegar, to taste
• 2 egg yolks
• 200ml extra virgin olive oil

METHOD

1. For the almond sauce, heat oven to 160C fan-forced (180C conventional). Spread the almond meal on a baking tray lined with baking paper and roast until lightly golden, around 5 minutes.
2. Transfer the roasted meal to a saucepan, add 150ml water and heat gently, stirring, to approximately 50C. Pour the almond mixture into a blender and blend to a smooth paste, seasoning to taste with the vinegar and flaky sea salt. With the motor running, add the egg yolks, then slowly drizzle in the oil in a thin stream, as if making a mayonnaise. Check the seasoning, adjusting it if necessary. Almond sauce will keep refrigerated in an airtight container for three days.
3. Cleave only the tough, outermost leaves from the cauliflower, then submerge it in brine for two hours.
4. Drain well, then place in a steamer over a pan of boiling water for about 10 minutes, or until a skewer will go into the thick part of the stem with only a little complaint. Remove the cauliflower from the steamer and let it cool to room temperature, then cut it in half. (You can also roast it whole, if you prefer.)
5. Get your oven hot – 220C fan-forced (240C conventional) is good if you don’t have a wood oven. Place the cauliflower in a large roasting tin or a cast-iron pan, cut-side down, and give it a rubdown with enough oil to coat. Roast until parts are dark golden brown, around 10-15 minutes. Any charring is fine and just adds to the experience.
6. Spoon almond sauce onto a plate and prop the roasted cauliflower on top, with the heavily roasted surfaces displayed proudly. Dress simply with a healthy splash of olive oil, enough lemon juice to brighten the whole dish, a scatter of flaky sea salt and a little more fresh cracked black pepper than would seem reasonable. Finish it with a final flourish of mint and almonds.

Salt brine

INGREDIENTS

• 1 litre (4 cups) water
• 20g rock salt (for a 2 per cent brine)

METHOD

1. Bring all the ingredients to the boil in a large stainless-steel pot, making sure that the salt is completely dissolved. Pour this into a container that will hold both brine and ingredients and fit into your fridge. Allow to cool before use.

Serves 4-6

Bacon sandwich

Everyone has their own version of the ideal bacon sandwich. This is mine. A salty, fatty, simple pleasure, and the only true remedy for the excesses of the night before.

We make a soft, squishy fermented potato bread roll for this, almost like a ciabatta, but a milk bun or thick slices of soft white sandwich bread will do a bang-up job. Just don’t use sourdough – its character is too firm; the bread needs to support the bacon, not overpower it.

INGREDIENTS PER SANDWICH

• 100g bacon, ideally a mixture of streaky and back, rind on, dry-cured and smoked if possible
• some bread – a potato roll, milk bun or 2 slices of thick, soft white sandwich bread
• curry-leaf brown butter (see below), to taste
• fermented hot sauce (see below) or your favourite hot sauce, to taste

METHOD

1. Heat oven to 60C fan-forced (80C conventional). Start the bacon in a cold frying pan, then place over medium heat. Don’t move the bacon at all until the fat begins to render and the underside begins to brown. Once it has, flip your rashers and continue cooking until the fat has mostly rendered and the meat is crisp. I like it crisper than some, perhaps, but still with a bit of bend to it. Remove from the pan (reserve bacon fat), drain on paper towel, and keep warm in the oven while you see to your bread.
2. Spoon a little of the rendered bacon fat into a clean frying pan over medium heat, add the rolls, cut-side down, and toast that side only until golden. If you’re using slices of bread, just toast one side of each slice in the same way. Let the bread cool for approximately 17 seconds.
3. Spread the toasted sides of your roll or bread with curry-leaf brown butter. Pile the crisp bacon loosely onto the base, then give it a confident showing of freshly ground black pepper. Apply a slick of fermented hot sauce to the other piece of bread, then put it in place on top of the bacon and give the sandwich a firm squish. (Please don’t try to eat this with a knife and fork.)

Curry-leaf brown butter

Melt 100g unsalted butter in a saucepan over medium heat. When the butter starts to foam, add a large handful of fresh curry leaves and cook for two minutes or until the butter has browned and the curry leaves have darkened and are crisp. Strain the butter through a fine sieve, keeping both the flavoured brown butter, which can be spread on a multitude of things, and the crisp leaves, which can be used for topping curries or dhal.

Makes 100g

Fermented hot sauce

A trick everyone should have up their sleeve. A life without hot sauce is like a light bulb without electricity, or a tyre without air, or a lock without a key.

INGREDIENTS

• 500g fermented chilli (see below)
• 1¾ tbsp brown rice vinegar
• 15g white sugar
• 5g xanthan gum (from health-food shops; optional)

METHOD

1. Blend the fermented chilli in a blender until it’s as smooth as you can get it. Season to taste with vinegar and flaky sea salt. You want to taste the heat and fruit of the chilli first, followed by a gentle acidity from the vinegar, and just enough salt to amplify the flavours without it being salty.
2. If you’ve got some xanthan gum handy, adding it at 1 per cent of the total weight of your fermented chilli will thicken the sauce slightly to beneficial effect, with the added benefit of also helping to keep it emulsified.
3. Pass the sauce through a fine sieve into a sterilised bottle or jar and it’s ready to go.

Makes One bottle

Fermented chilli

The heat of chilli peppers varies from batch to batch, so have a little nibble (courage!) before committing. If you want to tone it down, remove some of the seeds and the white membrane they’re attached to (the hottest part) from a portion of the chillies before you proceed. It might be an idea to wear gloves while you do this.

INGREDIENTS

• 550g long red chillies
• 50g flaky sea salt
• vegetable oil, for drizzling

METHOD

1. Remove the green stems from the chillies, then weigh the chillies. Next, weigh out 10 per cent of the weight of the chillies in sea salt (50g salt for 500g de-stemmed chillies, for example).
2. Blitz the chillies and the salt together roughly in a food processor, until there’s just a little bit of chunkiness left.
3. Put the salted chilli into a sterilised jar, cover it with a light slick of neutral oil and leave it at room temperature for a week to ferment.
4. Give it a stir every couple of days to keep the top layer moist, until you see signs of a slight fizz, then put it in the fridge to arrest the fermentation. It should keep for several months.

Makes 500g

Salted chocolate tahini cookies

Simply my favourite cookie. Ever. Savoury, sweet and chewy, I feel that everyone should know of it. This makes about 20 cookies weighing about 150g apiece. This may seem like a lot, but do it anyway.

Ingredients

• 345g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 360g (1⅓ cups) tahini
• 300g caster sugar
• 270g brown sugar
• 3 eggs, plus 3 egg yolks
• 450g (3 cups) plain flour
• 2¼ tsp baking powder
• 3 tsp flaky sea salt, plus extra for sprinkling
• 840g chocolate chips
• 200g toasted sesame seeds, for sprinkling

METHOD

1. Beat the butter, tahini and both sugars in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment on medium speed for about three minutes or until pale and fluffy.
2. Add the eggs and egg yolks and beat, scraping down the sides of the bowl occasionally, until fully incorporated.
3. Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. With the mixer on its lowest speed, add the dry ingredients to the tahini mix and beat until only just combined. Lastly, add the chocolate chips, spinning the paddle only enough to disperse them. If there’s a crucial element in this recipe, it’s to not overmix. Cover the dough and refrigerate overnight.
4. The next day, heat oven to 140C fan-forced (160C conventional). Roll the dough into 150g balls. Dip the top half of each ball into a small bowl of toasted sesame seeds, then place on a baking tray lined with baking paper, with the seed-topped side facing up. Sprinkle with a healthy pinch of salt.
5. Bake the cookies for approximately 16 minutes, or until they’re golden around the edges, pulled up slightly, still a little pale and almost liquid in the middle.
6. Remove from the oven and cool for 10 minutes on the baking tray, then transfer to a wire rack to continue to cool to room temperature.
7. These cookies will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for a week, if they manage to make it that far.

Makes 20

Roasted mango

My first taste of a mango was of a warm, overripe and, I’m now guessing, slightly fermented specimen straight from the tree in the middle of a hot Australian summer. It was an experience I was not keen to repeat. So it came as a pleasant surprise to me that cooked mango is something well worth considering. When the mango is just cooked and has still not quite returned to room temperature, the heavily caramelised fruit has the texture of a condensed creme brulee.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 large ripe mangoes
• 100g (½ cup) lightly packed dark brown sugar
• 125ml (½ cup) pure cream
• 125ml (½ cup) coconut cream
• lime or lemon wedges, for squeezing

METHOD

1. Cut the four chubby cheeks from your mangoes; keep the skin on, but score the flesh side with the pointy end of a small, sharp knife in a criss-cross fashion, cutting about halfway to the skin.
2. Coat the cut flesh with the brown sugar, giving each cheek a little flex to open its cuts and let the sugar in. Put the cheeks to the side while you prepare a whipped mango fool to go with it.
3. Cut and scrape away any mango flesh stuck to the pit, and puree in a blender until smooth. Combine the cream and coconut cream in a bowl and whisk to silky, soft peaks, then fold through the pureed mango flesh; it doesn’t need to be fully incorporated, a little streakiness is fine. Refrigerate until you’re ready to serve.
4. When you’re ready to roll, heat oven to 200C fan-forced (220C conventional), or if you have a wood-fired oven, this is its moment. Warm a well-seasoned cast-iron pan big enough to hold the cheeks in one layer over high heat. Once the pan is smoking, lay your cheeks in, flesh-side down. Give them half a minute on the stove, then place the pan straight into the hot oven.
5. Let the mango cook for 3-4 minutes until just softened and surrounded by caramelised and slightly burnt sugar. Roll the cheeks gently around to capture as much of the sugar as possible, then transfer them to a plate to cool to room temperature.
6. Eat your mangoes with a spoon, straight from the skin, seasoned with a little sprinkle of flaky sea salt, a spritz of fresh lime or lemon juice and a large dollop of the whipped mango fool.

Serves 4

This is an edited extract from Ester by Mat Lindsay with Pat Nourse, Murdoch Books, RRP $55. Photography: Patricia Niven. Buy now