huitlacoche

Real huitlacoche, in all its spooky beauty

August 13, 2010 by Lesley Tellez

I was so excited to find this yesterday: a piece of huitlacoche, real huitlacoche, with the corncob still attached!

Usually vendors in Mexico sell huitlacoche (a corn fungus, obvs) in plastic bags, having already plucked the plump nuggets off the corncob. I bought this from an old woman outside Metro San Cosme, in the Colonia San Rafael. She had huitlacoche, nopal and a few bunches of herbs spread out on the sidewalk. Everything came from Toluca.

Fresh huitlacoche is a rare find in the United States, by the way. According to the cookbook Tacos, which I just stumbled on in Google Books (otherwise, I would not normally read a taco cookbook, because tacos are not dishes in themselves, they are a way to eat something) the U.S. government requires a special permit to grow huitlacoche, since it’s a fungus and the spores are disseminated through the air. Heaven forbid too much American corn becomes contaminated — how would we fulfill our corn syrup needs?

Unfortunately I won’t know what corncob-attached huitlacoche tastes like. I’m leaving town tomorrow for two weeks and won’t be home for most of today. Yesterday I gave my spooky huitlacoche to Lola, so she could enjoy it. She said she planned to make “unos ricos tacos.”

Deliciously smutty huitlacoche quesadillas

April 29, 2010 by Lesley Tellez

While in Xochimilco a few weekends ago, I picked up some fresh huitlacoche from a stand outside the market. Huitlacoche means “corn smut” in English (ha!), and it’s a fungus that grows on corn in blue-black, mushroomy clumps. People like to call huitlacoche “the Mexican truffle,” but I’m not entirely sure how true that is, given that corn smut is pretty cheap and eaten by the mouthful, while truffles are insanely expensive and shaved onto fancy pasta dishes. Anyway.

I’ve had huitlacoche quesadillas at markets in Mexico City, and to be completely honest, I haven’t always liked them. Sometimes they have an intensely earthy taste, like mushrooms on steroids. And they can be very slimy. The good news is that huitlacoche is actually packed with vitamins, according to a recent Associated Press report. It has the same types of soluble fibers as oatmeal, the same ones that have been found to lower cholesterol.

I had never bought fresh huitlacoche, because I wasn’t totally in love with the taste. But they looked so pretty sitting on the Xochimilco tabletop. They had this kind of iridescent bluish color, and they were these round, spongey tufts. I just wanted to touch them. Ruth, ever my culinary door-opener, told me huitlacoche was easy to cook — just mix it with some onion, corn kernels and chicken stock, and simmer for about 20 minutes.

So that’s exactly what I did.

And Ruth was right — it was easy.

By the way, there are lots of debates going on right now about whether “fast and easy” is the death knell of American culinary culture. I tend to believe that fast and easy shouldn’t be the top priority in the kitchen; the most important rule is to cook with fresh ingredients. So yes, this dish was fast, but my first rule was met: I had fresh huitlacoche and fresh corn.

I heated some oil in a skillet, and then added the onion, smut, corn kernels and stock. Simmered everything for about 30 minutes, until the plump bits of huitlacoche had deflated a bit and turned black and slimy. Added more stock whenever the mixture looked too dry.

It looked like of like a pile of shredded, motor-oil soaked rags when it was done. (Oily rags dotted with yellow corn.) But the taste was unlike any other huitlacoche I’ve tried. It was only delicately earthy, not knock-you-over-the-head earthy. Moreover, combined with the cheese, it was almost decadent — a soft, cheesy pile of vegetables, whispering of mushrooms and corn. Gave some to Crayton for lunch two days in a row — a rarity for me, because I like to mix it up — and he loved it.

Huitlacoche is apparently very abundant in Mexico’s rainy season; for more recipe ideas, check out the wonderful Karen Hursh Graber at MexConnect. My simple little recipe is below. This is great as a light dinner, or as an appetizer.
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The night I made Crayton eat brains and grasshoppers

June 16, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

My yahoo email account got hacked into last night. I got everything sorted out in a few hours, but by that time I was dying for a beer, and something comforting and horrible for me.

First we tried Chili’s for American brews and queso. (For all the non-Texans out there: Queso is a processed cheese sauce made with Velveeta and Rotel. It’s several notches above Cheese Whiz on the taste hierarchy, but below queso fundido.) Unfortunately, as soon as we sat down, we were informed that Chili’s no longer carries queso. So instead I suggested we go Cantina Belmont, a place I’ve read about in my guidebook.

It’s supposed to be popular with local politicians, and I was expecting a dive-ish place with cheap beer and tacos. Oh no — this place had white tablecloths, and waiters who draped linen napkins on our laps. And… cue the drums… an item called salsa en molcajete, which involved the chef making salsa tableside. Like they do with guacamole in the States. Except, it’s freaking salsa.

So of course we had to order it, and the chef showed up at our table with about a dozen chilies and condiments in separate earthenware bowls.

Among them were charales, tiny fish often served in Patzcuaro; pine-nut sized chilies called pico de pajaro, and dried, fried grasshoppers, among other things. The chef described everything and then asked what I wanted.

I turned to Crayton. “Do you want grasshoppers?” I used the Spanish word, chapulines.

“Sure,” he said.

Surprised at his adventurousness, I nodded at the chef, and he ground up some grasshoppers in the molcajete. Then he added cascabel chilies, chiles de arbol, the pico de pajaros, a good helping of chopped garlic and onion, a few stewed tomatoes, a toss of sea salt and a glug of bottled water. It looked soo good.

He drizzled a bit onto two tortilla chips, and offered them to us. We tasted.

Ooooh. Smoky. Garlicky. Picoso, but not too much. And just a little sweet. I think it was the best salsa I’ve ever had. I told the chef it was perfect, and he nodded and walked back into the kitchen.

“So, can you believe there are grasshoppers in here?” I asked Crayton.

“What?”

“Grasshoppers. I asked and you said you didn’t mind.”

“Ohhh… I thought you said champiñones,” he said. Champiñones means mushrooms.

However, since he’d already tried the grasshoppers, which you really couldn’t taste anyway since they were ground into bits, he let me order a round of quesadillas — one with squash flowers, one with huitlacoche, or corn fungus; one with brains, and one plain. I thought he’d love the brains, since they were meaty and kind of gamey tasting. He pronounced them “an acquired taste.”

For his main dish, he was much more his meat-and-potatoes self. He ordered prime rib tacos. I had a shrimp and octopus cocktail.

A lonely, leftover flor de calabaza quesadilla:

We left happy and stuffed, and got our leftover salsa to go. I might go have some right now. 10 a.m. isn’t too early, right?