Enchiladas and Beans

Cooked up a storm yesterday. We were getting together with Kea's cousin, who was here for surgery, and her family, and Kea's sister and her family, which includes two school-age kids who have sports like all day on Saturdays. We were happy to cook since we hardly ever do, although we were a little worried about cooking for so many people, as we never have before. Seriously, this is the most burners we have ever used.

I did the beans in the back. I have always wanted to try making beans from scratch and I figured this was a good opportunity cuz how you gonna take a can of beans to someone's house? I was a little worried though that the effort wouldn't be worth it because I've sometimes had beans from scratch that were nothing special. Hoped it would just be about seasoning though and I was really happy with how it turned out. I used this recipe, although I don't know why it lists "slow cooker" as one of the tools because in the directions, it doesn't really make sense to use a slow cooker. Anyway, my beans were soft after only about 2.5 hours I think, but I still stewed them for an extra couple hours with the sofrito (which is in the fry pan) and it was fine. Oh, also, I didn't use the food mill cuz too much work! So I just diced the onion and pepper to start off. Warning: This smells soooo good as it cooks!

Kea wanted to make green sauce for the first time (in foreground). He found tomatillos and serranos at Safeway Kapahulu, which he says has everything. I'm not sure what recipe he used, but it called for like 4-5 serranos and it was way too hot. We like hot stuff of all kinds, like wasabi, ginger, angry red Korean soups, Thai. Really, we like stuff that's hot enough to make you sweat, but this was too much so he ended up throwing some sour cream in. It worked out okay; even our 12-year-old nephew ate it (although he did say it was hot). Next time, though, starting with maybe 1 or 2 peppers! The big surprise for us was that green sauce is not too hard to make; it seems a lot less common than red sauce so I thought it must be hard to make, but the basic steps were boil tomatillos and peppers until tomatillos lose their bright green color, and then blend.

Since we were making two pans of enchiladas, I suggested using corn tortillas for one (because I love them so much more). They were very fragile, but I love the taste. And I think flour tortillas make me feel sick sometimes.