Goodbye Aliens, Hello Food.

(Subtitled:  It's still Monday in America.)

Yes, Magazine Monday came and went and I was caught up with the last week of teaching and marking and baby juggling and other boring things like that.  So today is transatlantic Magazine Monday - we're fine by LA time.

We had a bit of a foodie weekend, which will not be surprising for those people who know us.  In fact, most people who know us will be asking "Aren't all your weekends foodie?".  Well, yes, I do tend to orientate this way.  But this weekend was particularly so.  We went to the Canberra Farmers Market at EPIC, which was celebrating its 5th anniversary.   Among the celebrations were cooking demonstrations by local chefs using produce bought at the markets.  We watched the head chef from Grazings make a salad using Poacher's Pantry smoked duck, and tasted his macadamia, chive and fetta pesto (yummy indeed),

And then we went home to get a jump on this week's magazine.  Introducing - a week of eating courtesy of Gourmet Traveller!

I was lucky enough to be given a subscription to Gourmet Traveller last Christmas.  I read it every month, usually drooling, but ever since the arrival of destructo-boy - uh, I mean my son - I haven't been cooking that many complex recipes.  

This will change!

The first recipe we decided to try was a simple David Thompson one.  We own, and love, Thompson's classic cookbook Thai Food.  Every recipe in it we have tried is amazing.  It is, however, not an easy cookbook.  To do the food justice, you need to set aside a full afternoon (or sometimes a day) and be prepared to be precise, fastidious and meticulous.

The recipe we tried on the weekend was from his new book, Thai Street Food.  The recipes are described as 'easy' and 'fresh'.  And, for David Thompson, it was relatively simple.  A simple assembly of ingredients:

I said relatively.  There were only two things we had to buy specially (well, three if you count the duck eggs but you could use chicken eggs) and the rest we had in the pantry. 

It cooked up to quite a decent Pat Thai (David Thompson says Pat instead of Pad, and I'm not going to argue!):

No meat, just tofu and dried shrimp instead of fresh which gave it a nice, chewy, gusty edge.  A little chilli and garlic oil at the end punched it up to where we like it.  And the leftovers were great for lunch the next day.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go hunt down suppliers for agar agar powder so I can make Parmesan marshmallows for our next recipe.