Making burritos from Rostock market ingredients

My wife and I recently moved here from California, where we ate burritos at least two or three times a week. Since arriving in Rostock we've been in serious burrito withdrawal, and have decided to go ahead and make our own. I decided to post here to ask if others know where to get the ingredients we haven't been able to find, to share what we've found out so far and to invite collaborators in our burrito quest.

First, let's define the foodstuff in question. A California burrito is a fairly different kind of food than what Texans or Mexicans are likely to call a burrito. We usually use flour tortillas (although there are strong differences of opinion on the subject), and fill them with rice, beans, salsa, cheese, some grilled veggies and occasionally guacamole or other tasty amendments.

We've been making our own tortillas, based on this recipe:
http://www.texasrollingpins.com/tortillarecipe.html
Some of the stores here have tortillas, but they don't look very good, and they are vastly overpriced.

Salsa isn't too hard, as the tomatoes are decent (considering the time of year), lemons, garlic and onions are available, and the Vietnamese shop on Kabutzenhof has good cilantro. The things that are more challenging to find are:

1. Cheese that works in a burrito. 95% of the cheeses here are some variation on Gouda, or Tilsiter or Munster, or Swiss (Emmentaler and Appenzeller). I don't expect any of the stores here to carry actual Mexican quesos, but there are few cheeses that work less well on a burrito than the cheese I've seen in the stores here. Does anyone have any suggestions? Iris has made cheese in the past, and if someone had a good recipe for a fast cheese we might even try to make some quesos. If we're going to make our burritos from scratch, may as well go all in, no?

2. Beans. We've found dried Pintos at the grocery in the Neptune shopping center, but it would be great to find black beans, which are really my favorite. Do they have those here?

3. Hot peppers. One or two of the stores have had peppers that looked like they might be hot, but weren't that hot. Is there some place in town to get honestly hot peppers?

4. Good avocados. The avocados we've seen have all been rock hard, or partly rotten, or both. Is there some special secret shop to get good avocados? Is it just that the season is wrong?

5. Finally, are there any Mexican restaurants in Rostock that are worth the visit?

We don't claim to be experts on Cali-Mex cooking, so if anyone has helpful hints, I'd be glad to hear them, and if anyone wants to teach us how to make a real burrito, we'd be glad to learn.

Oh yes, and I haven't mentioned meat yet. This is because we don't usually eat any, and don't put any in our burritos. We have no objections to other people eating whatever pleases them, but we eat a very low meat diet.

NO! Not that I have heard of and not that I know of. You seem to know what you are doing and as for the avocados, the good ones are just now coming in and in the off season you have to buy them and ripen them in your window sill. As for hot peppers, there are plenty to be had but they are not commonly carried in every store. Serranos are hard to come by, but habaneros are appearing in more and more outlets. Many asian stores carry the hard to find ingredients, including black beans. As for your no meat, shame on you. Nothing better than a beef and bean burrito on a cold night! Warms the heart and the sheets.

Try Asian stores for black beans and peppers. Turkish markets will also sometimes have hot peppers.

I've yet to find a truly decent avocado here.

We may try making a queso blanco like this:
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Cottage/1288/quick/queso.htm

Hi Dan, my family and I make fajitas quite often and we just use plain old cheddar cheese you can buy at the cheese counter at Globus. Black beans I'm sure you can get at the Asian markets. Unless you like refried beans, which I do, then you can buy them canned at Real or make them yourself, there are recipes every where for that. Hot peppers? If you're talking about jalepeno's, I've seen them at Real as well. The tortilla recipe you have is pretty much the same as mine, so you're good there . And no, there is not a good Mexican restaurant here in Rostock. The ambience is nice and sometimes so are the cocktails, but if you want good Mexican food, then you are better off making it yourself. Good luck!

Thanks Tonica. We're so new to town I hadn't even heard of Globus or Real. We haven't been to Roggentin or Lambrechtshagen yet. We will have to check them out.

i dont think putting them on a window sill works well.
a mexican friend taught me to ripen avocados by putting them in a paper bag or in newspaper and leaving them in a dark spot for a couple of days. it works beautifully.