Huitlacoche/Cuitlacoche/Hongo/Corn Mushroom

Huitlacoche with metal tablespoon

Here’s some huitlacoche off the corn cob with a measuring spoon for size.  Crepas de huitlacoche were one of the first things I ever ate in Mexico, eagerly anticipated because I had read about huitlacoche somewhere.

I was a bit disappointed.  The filling was dramatically black (I’m amazed there’s not a big export market to Japan to add one more vegetable to black in their spectrum of colors).  But it seemed bland.  I put it down to distraction because I was parrying questions from a talk about plate tectonics.

Since then over the years I’ve had it on many more occasions and always with the same reaction.  So this year, with the street vendors unloading bursting cobs at bargain prices, I decided to give it a real test.

Street vendor with bucket of huitlacoche off the cob

So I took it home and instead of chopping and sauteeing a little onion, garlic and chile serrano  (typical round here) or adding cream (as for crepes),  I simply sauteed it in a little butter and added a little salt.

Huitlacoche in teflon pan

Verdict.  Perfectly decent.  The grains that are still not completely converted to the fungus have to my taste a more pleasing texture and a nice maiz-y flavor.  The ones on the point of bursting seem less tasty and have a slightly furry texture that I don’t particularly like, hence the cream in many recipes, I assume.  I’ve stocked my freezer with a good few packets to eat in the coming months.

Even so, I can’t say huitlacoche excites me as much as some other Mexican specialties such as huazontle or xoconostle, both of which come very near  the top of my list. Or even nopales.

Perhaps huitlacoche is so common in upmarket Mexican restaurants because of the color, the slight frisson of a corn fungus (one reason it was avoided for so long in the US was that it was a candidate as a cause of pellagra, though its name has now been cleared), and (hush) because it is available canned.

And one last sad point.  I’d thought it was so widely available this year because of its increasing popularity.  No.  It’s because we’ve had such bad weather.  The first crop of maize planted by campesinos (peasants) died when no rains came in July and August.  They re-planted when it rained in September.  But the plants did not do and all the ears turned to huitlacoche.

In normal years, a wooden case (think size of cardboard box from the grocery store) could be sold for US$ 30, a nice bit of extra income for a campesino.  This year you can’t get anyone to buy.  And you have no maize either.  How lucky, said one to me, that we now have commercio libre (NAFTA).  At least we won’t go hungry.

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