I warned him that trying to sneak two bags of mysterious white powder in my luggage on an international flight might cause some problems, so I was pretty surprised when I got through security in Amsterdam without any issues. Aiden, a fellow homebrewer raised in California (and now living in Sweden), was insistent that I supply the masa for our upcoming taco pop-up, and that the tortillas be made from scratch. We had both grown up eating regularly at our local taquerias, and while we assumed there would be very few people in attendance at Carnivale Brettanomyces who were familiar with traditional Mexican food, we would have hated ourselves if we did them, or our Chicano friends, a disservice.
All morning we cooked the goat meat at our friend’s canal-side apartment. In addition to the masa, I had brought dried chilis from California, and the rest we bought at a local market. I’m happy to say it was a success. So successful, in fact, that word reached across borders.
Following Carnivale, Aiden and I stayed in the small village of Kortenaken in Belgium. Our host, Tom Jacobs, had been at the festival and visited our booth. By the time we arrived at the farm where he and his brother, Wim, produce beer and wine under the name Antidoot, we found out that Wim was saddened he had missed out on the birria—he told us he had never had a taco before.
We quickly got to work during a small gathering of neighbors, brewers, bar owners, and Lambic blenders to recreate the experience. Without tomatillos for a green salsa, we had to substitute gooseberries picked in the garden and charred in a pan. Wim cooked beef cheek carbonnade as the filling, though we had to direct him on the spices.
A fire was lit on the small brick hearth between the grapevines, and a cast-iron flat-top was laid down so we could cook one more round of tortillas. These tacos, with their unconventional salsa and untraditional beef filling, were not the authentic experience we had aimed for at the festival. But Wim’s face upon tasting one let us know that the experiment had been a success.
Words + Photoby Tim Decker