Tuna Toast

Happy Birthday J and KA-BA-LEI!!!

Happy Birthday J! (find J in this photo)

This comes a day late, but I wanted to give a shout out to my wonderful husband, J, and say Happy Birthday! Thanks for always eating everything I make and being such an encouragement for this blog, my job, my cooking....well, pretty much everything! Thanks for getting just as excited as I do when it comes to choosing where we will eat one night and what wine to drink the next. Even though you do not cook (and seriously, how could you? - the control freak that I am would probably not even allow anyone else to use my kitchen!). Thanks for the nights where we just order a thin crust basil-and-tomato pizza from Italiano's or get a roast chicken from the supermarket and make it a meal with some eggplant hummus and wheat pita. It's nice to know that I have a food partner in crime that is just as down with picking up a burrito from La Fuente as he is eating a three-course meal I made from recipes in the Sunday Suppers at Lucques cookbook. Happy Birthday!


Since things have been hectic with J being on tour, we didn't really have a day off to celebrate. I decided to make him his favorite dessert- peach cobbler- as a present. He calls it "Ka-Ba-Lei" since his friend KT always calls it that- "I want peach ka-ba-lei! KA-BA-LEI!!!" Anyway, it was really easy and tasted lovely and sweet with a nice scoop of Soy Vanilla ice cream. I especially like that you can taste a bit of salt in these biscuits- it's a nice contrast to the sweetness of the cobbler.

Bubbling, yummy cobbler

J Birthday Ka-Ba-Lei (adapted from Peach Cobbler recipe in Gourment, Sept 1999)



6 large peaches, cut into thin wedges (I left the peel on- it makes for a nice, reddish color)
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon cornstarch

For biscuit topping
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1/4 cup cold buttermilk

Cook peaches:
Preheat oven to 425°F.
Toss peaches with sugar, lemon juice, and cornstarch in a 2-qt. nonreactive baking dish and bake in middle of oven 10 minutes.

Make topping while peaches bake:
Put flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt into a food processor. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal. Stir in buttermilk until just combined.

Remove peaches from oven and drop spoonfuls of topping over them. Bake in middle of oven until topping is golden, about 25 minutes. (Topping will spread as it bakes.)