Mexican Everday In Japan

I had been mouthing off how I like to cook mexican food here for a while. By the way, there isn't mexican food in Japan. They know of 'Tacos' but don't really know what they are. They have something here called 'Tacos Rice' (yep, with an s at the end of taco) they put ground beef on rice, then lettuce and cheese. It's kind of like a burrito with no tortilla and sticky rice. It's pretty good. I figured my new love for cooking and love for Mexican food would provide a lucky family with a Japanese meal. Yoko, the helpful lady in town, asked me to cook for her and her family. Since she cooked me a number of HUGE meals aaaaand she basically saved me from going crazy here that I at least owed her a meal to say 'Thank you.'

Hilary and I planned well in advance what we wanted to make. Guacamole, Acapulco shrimp cocktail, chipotle (not the fast food chain) tortas, salsa, and maybe some other random thing we could think of... nachos? I wanted to make one more dish, tacos. Not ground beef Old El' Paso tacos, but more legit tacos. Steak and softshell tortilla tacos. Well here was the problem, there are no mexican spices here. We found cumin, paprika, chaynne pepper, black pepper, salt, and garlic powder. Thats about it. That wasn't going to cut it. We needed to take a trip... to mexico! So we did. Hilary and I booked a ticket to go to Mexico and flew there. We flew into Mexico City and went to a couple different shops. We spent two nights there and went back to Japan. When we got back everything was confiscated at customs. We were back where we started... but with nicer tans. (If you haven't guessed, I didn't really go to Mexico.) So we drove to Nagaoka, a city about an hour away that had two import stores. The first one we went to had taco shells and taco seasoning by, of course, Old El Paso. I bought them as a back up. We got a decent selection of spices including chile powder that wasn't chaynne... but it didn't say way it was. We then went to the second import store and struck gold with pickled jalapenos (there are no raw ones in Japan, I swear.) and CORN tortillas mmmmm. We also found chipotle Tabasco sauce which would be handy for the shrimp cocktail. We eventually headed back to do a test run of tacos. We couldn't find steak so we got ground beef. It left us with almost no chile powder left. We made some decent tasting tacos... but I wasn't statisfied.

The next morning (the day before the dinner.) I did a second test run of tacos with pork and a rub recipe by Rick Bayless that would work for tacos. It was declious but we accidentally used up the rest of our chile powder... the good mysterious dark one... not the chaynne. I went to all the local stores hoping to find another bottle of spice... no luck. The Old El Paso tacos mix was laughing at me from the shelf "YOU WILL COOK ME!" it said "They will think that I taste like mexican food!!!" It laughed again. "NO!!! NEVER!! I NEVER WILL!!! YOU ARE EVIL!!!" I screamed. Hilary asked me who I was yelling at. "No time!" I explained. I hopped in the car and drove to Jusco (the Walmart of Japan) ...there MUST be an answer and JUSCO!

There was no answer at JUSCO but there WERE steaks. I got 4 small steaks, and 4 chicken breasts.

Sunday morning, the morning of the feast... I woke up to someone beating on my door. "OPEN UP! IT'S THE POLICE!!!!" They yelled. "WE HAVE REASON TO BELIEVE YOU WERE ENGAGED IN ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES!!!" I opened the door, it was a mail man. He laughed and said "GOTCHA!!! Now, sign for the package" I gave him a high five for his hilarious joke (none of that dialogue actually happened). And as if by an act of God (my mother) I opened a package filled to the brim with Mexican spices, dried peppers, canned jalapenos and various other things that I have never seen, smelled, or probably tasted before. It was a SUNDAY, no one get s mail on a SUNDAY except for ME!!!! At the bottom was the cookbook "Mexican Everday" by Rick Bayless, my chef-idol. Anyway, I opened it up and went through picking out recipes that I could now cook! In the end we made the following feast for Yoko and it was AMAZING.

Acapulco Shrimp Cocktail
Steak Tacos
Chipotle Chicken Tortas
Chicken Tortilla Soup
Guacamole

There was soooo much food. I think we blew Yoko and her family away. The son and father especially liked it. I think it may have been a bit too spicy for Yoko, although I warned her well in advance that it might be too spicy... she tasted everything, but in the end ate lots of tortillas filled with only guacamole. Although I think she liked the tortilla soup. Maybe she just wasn't hungry. Anyway, she said she loved it and they kept all the leftovers.

Here's a photos of the meal...