As I've mentioned (several times!) before, one of the only food items I miss here in Japan is Mexican food. When I visited America in December/January I had planned on bringing back cans of refried beans, which are nearly impossible to find here. I realized that could end up making my suitcase MUCH too heavy, so I decided to bring back dry pinto beans instead, so I can make my own refried beans. Yesterday and today I worked on my first try.
Cooking the beans was the easy part; time-consuming, but easy. They turned out pretty tasty. I experimented with different seasonings and ended up adding red chili powder, paprika, cumin, salt, pepper, and olive oil. I finally found a grocery store that sells a brand of salsa that's made locally, so it's not too expensive. For sour cream (which is rather difficult to find here) I substituted plain yogurt. The hardest part was tortillas. I have seen them here (only frozen, not fresh), but they are crazy expensive. I thought about what I could use as a substitute, and finally realized, since I'm in Utsunomiya (which is considered to be the gyoza/pot sticker capitol of Japan) I should use gyoza wrappers! They're not too different from tortillas, except for their size. I had originally thought that I could make very small versions of rolled burritos, but quickly realized that would be impossible. My compromise: put beans and cheese on a gyoza wrapper and then top it with another and fry both sides. So they ended up more like what some people call tostadas, but they were delicious anyway.
Maybe next time I'll splurge and buy real tortillas-it would definitely save some time . . .
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