Sunday 19 February 2012

Cooking crispy cheese

As you know I am a vegetarian baboon and so are all of my troop at Baboon HQ!  I like to share vegetarian recipes with pals who are vegetarian or like vegetarian food, so here is one of our favourites.  Its official name is pasta pagmigiana, but we change a few ingredients and called it crispy cheese.

Ingredients




Amounts suitable for 2 adults with good appetites!

8 oz of pasta
2 peppers, colourful ones are nice

A few mushrooms
1 leek (we added that)
1/4 pint of yogurt (the original recipe was for double cream but that was a bit rich for us baboons)
Some lemon juice
Black pepper (plenty of it for us baboons
Cheese (a hard cheese with enough fat in it to sizzle and get brown and crispy, as much as you want)
A little olive oil (or other oil if you prefer)
Boiling water for pasta

Prepare your ingredients



Chop the vegetables as small as you prefer.
Grate the cheese
Measure out 1/4 pint of yogurt (that is about the size of a small pot)

Start cooking



If your grill is electric and takes time to warm up turn it on to a medium heat about now.

Fry the vegetables in a little olive oil (or other oil) for about 7 minutes in a high heat.
Boil the pasta for as long as you normally do.

When the vegetables have been fried I tend to drain them to get rid of excess fluid from the mushrooms as it makes the sauce slightly creamier and less likely to split.

What do I do next?



Take the vegetables (drained or otherwise depending on what you prefer), off the heat and stir in the yogurt, sprinkle in a few drops of lemon juice (how much depends on your taste), and liberally add freshly ground black pepper (if you can get it, if not any pepper).

By this time you should be ready to drain the pasta.

Now what?



Mix up the cooked pasta with the vegetable sauce in an oven proof dish.


Sprinkle the grated cheese on top.
If your grill is gas turn it on now to a medium heat.  If your grill is electric I hope its on medium heat by now.

Put the dish under the grill 6 to 8 inches below the heat source if possible.

OK what next?



You will have quite a lot of washing up by now so at Baboon HQ we normally do that while the dish is under the grill.

You will know how good your grill is and how long it will take.  We have an electric grill and I leave it there for about 15 minutes, about half way through that I turn it up to a higher temperature to really crisp up the dish.  Whether you that will depend on your grill and how crispy and charcoalish you like your food.

Do we twiddle our thumbs while its grilling?

We baboons do have thumbs to twiddle but we don't do that.  We are always busy at Baboon HQ these days so multi-tasking is the word.  While the dish is grilling I do other things.  Today I rinsed some nice berries to eat later.


Eventually the dish is ready so you can take it out from under the grill.  I usually find the dish is so hot that I double up on oven gloves to avoid dropping it.


Look how yummy that looks!  Enjoy!

My person likes to have white wine with this, the man person likes red wine and we other baboons have banana cocktails (non-alcoholic of course, the idea of drunken baboons is a little scary)!

Sunday 12 February 2012

Valentine competition results

I always get excited about the results of the competitions and then I am always sad that not everyone could win.  Before I announce the winners I will just mention that there is an adopt a wild baboon competition in the next edition of Fauguex, coming out on 1 March and I will be announcing my Easter competition in a few weeks time, so watch out for both of those.

I use an internet random number generator to draw the winners.  Winners will also be notified via Twitter or Can Be Social.

Congratulations to the winners, who are:

The first number to be drawn was number 26 - that is Monty.  This is very exciting because Monty is @MrsFiddlesticks and @Tim_Kirby's re-homed baboon.  Imagine that a re-homed baboon now has the chance to adopt a monkey or owl of his own.  Monty is interested in conservation so this will be a great prize for him and I reckon that he might even persuade his family to bring him to visit his chosen monkey or owl.

Monty please look at http://www.owlandmonkeyhaven.co.uk/adoption-form.aspx?package=Silver and choose your monkey or owl and then DM me on Twitter to let me know which monkey or owl you want to adopt and how you want your name put on the certificate.  I will do the rest.  I know your family are busy so no hurry.

The second number to come out was number 20 - that is @Teddy_Red.  Teddy Red wins the T-shirt in aid of the rabbit sanctuary.

Teddy please look at http://www.hasenfarm.com/pages/de/motive/kaninchenrettung.php and let me know what colour and size you want and where you would like it sent.  I wonder what colour Teddy will choose!  Any guesses anyone?

The third number to come out was number 18 - Greg and Burnie and little Chriss, our lovely bearents bears from Can Be Social, they win the re-homed jellycat baboon!  Greg and Burnie we will send the sweet baboon on to you as soon as I can get my person to the post office!!  He is really looking forward to meeting you and becoming part of your exciting family.

Congratulations to all the winners.  If you didn't win anything this time hang on in there, there will be many more competition.

Remember to look out for the wild baboon competition in Fauguex (that doesn't mean you have to have an angry baboon in your home) and I will advertise my Easter competition in a few weeks.  I hope eventually all my friends will win prizes.

Thank you for entering.

Saturday 11 February 2012

A Valentine Romance

Calling all primates - that includes you humans!

If any of you have not thought of a romantic thing to do for Valentine's day yet here is something to think about http://www.owlandmonkeyhaven.co.uk/news.aspx.  You can help give a lovely young couple of primates a new start in their new home.  Martin has been lonely but now he has Lulu, they need a new home together.

This is a Valentine present that any partner would appreciate, a donation to Martin and Lulu!

Martin & Lulu Appeal

How could anyone resist helping these little primates, see how much Martin wants to be with Lulu!

Thank you all for reading.

Love from Kolo

Update on Valentine's Competition

Thank you to so many of you for entering the competition.  We have 40 entries, that is marvellous!

I have to change one little thing.  Next week is going to be crazy for my person and we may not have time to do the draw and notify people on Tuesday.  Because of this I have decided to do the draw tomorrow.  I hope that is OK for everyone.  We wanted to do the draw on Valentine's day but that silly job thing my person goes off and does in the daytime seems to be taking up too much time.

I am sorry to have to change things but I don't want to take the chance of having to delay.

Thank you for your understanding.

Lots of love from Kolo
FOUNDING MEMBER