An Unsavoury Sight to Behold
A Treasure to Eat

BY MARK TREALOUT
Photography by Laura Berman

I'm a very adventurous eater and cook, but the only thing that has ever really intimidated me in the kitchen is that corn smut stuff. I've had no qualms catching fresh pigs blood for homemade blood pudding, and I’ve even cleaned pig intestines to use as sausage casings... but that blue-grey corn fungus is crazy stuff. In fact, a couple of respectable Toronto chefs just about threw me out of their kitchens when I brought this in to show them and ask their opinion on it.

The first time Les Bowser (one of the Kawartha Ecological Growers/KEG farmers I work with) of Cedar Grove Farm in Omemee gave me some of his to sample, it sat in the bottom drawer of my fridge for about three weeks as I peeked at it from time to time in curiosity – but I always shut that drawer pretty quickly. I’d occasionally bring it out to scare someone with. Come to think of it, I’m sure we’ve all had some science project in our fridges like this to relate to, no? Well, this was mine. And even when it was at its freshest, it just looked too bizarre to try to cook with, let alone eat. And if this sounds bad, you should buy yourself a can of huitlacoche (the only way it’s available in specialty grocery stores) and see for yourself. The canned stuff will certainly make you question its edibility.

On the other hand, Chris McDonald, chef-owner of Cava and Xococava in Toronto, has been politely pestering me for over a year in anticipation of a new season’s crop (which actually started a week previous to my writing this article). Then there’s Anthony Rose, executive chef of the Drake Hotel, who takes as much as I can get him, any time I can get it. (He uses it mostly for personal use and gives some as gifts to Mexican friends). And Andrés Anhalt of Milagro restaurants is Mexican and he can’t believe that KEG is able to bring in local huitlacoche from north of the city. From the anecdotal stories I’ve been told and from personal experience, many people are willing to go to great lengths for fresh corn smut. So what is it about this stuff? What food can be so unusual as to cause repulsion, fascination, inspiration and delight all at the same time?

Corn smut is most commonly known as huitlacoche (whee-tla-KO-cheh), but is also called cuitlacoche, maize mushroom or Mexican truffle (to get technical, the Latin nomenclature is Ustilago maydis). Whatever you call it, it is an edible fungal delicacy that grows on both the corn stalk and on ears of corn under precise environmental conditions. These mushroom-like spores feed on the immature corn and can turn each individual corn kernel a beautiful (in a weird-kinda-way) blue, grey or black colour. The fungus then enlarges each kernel as it fills up with new spores in an effort to reproduce itself (hungry yet?). If you manage to catch this process at the right stage (before the kernels overfill with these spores and burst, resulting in a slightly slimy, black mess), it is indeed quite stunning.

Often described as having an almost smoky flavour somewhere between a very earthy mushroom and fresh sweet corn, huitlacoche is used in a variety of Mexican dishes. It is often prepared with epazote (a Mexican herb that’s also difficult to source here), chiles, onions and garlic. Then, because of its sometimes mealy texture, it is often ground or puréed. It certainly adds that hard-to-get-for-this-area authenticity to whatever Mexican treat it’s used in – an unusual, stand-up-and-take-notice bottom note.

According to McDonald, huitlacoche has a “fairly neutral [flavour and is] a bit chalky in texture. The classic way that you prepare it in Mexico is in crepes flavoured with poblano chiles and onions. This is how I plan to serve it at the Brick Works Picnic [in October]. You can also make soup from it. When I worked in Zihuatanejo, [Mexico], I would occasionally use it under poached grouper with marinated cherry tomatoes. Pretty striking, and the flavour is subtle enough to not overpower.”

So far, I’ve been looking at this corn smut while wearing the bib of a fellow foodie. But as I take off my bib and put on my farmer hat, when you are trying to grow sweet corn on some scale and end up with a field with almost 25 percent infection (which has been reported in a few severe cases), you might view this stuff a bit differently: that’s 25 percent of your expected gross profit. In a poor corn year, this might represent all of your net profit. In years past, in fact, it’s been called a scourge on Ontario corn and has resulted in science making us a “better” corn: corn hybrids are constantly being developed and improved to withstand this type of “disease.”

Les Bowser and other local corn growers have been unintentionally hit with huitlacoche as a naturally occurring process and, as it turns out, this stuff is downright difficult to cultivate (although McDonald believes that a farmer in Florida has been successful). Because of consumer demand, attempts are still being made to replicate the natural processes using specialized overhead watering equipment and spore inoculants. So far there has been no more success reported with artificial means than with naturally occurring fields under the right growing conditions. Perhaps this is what makes it even more special: having to wait for a rather short window for harvesting (September and maybe some of October in Ontario), and then having to depend on precise environmental conditions – high humidity, frequent rain showers, correct temperatures, and hard winds that allow the spores to enter the tightly wrapped ears of corn.

The full process goes like this: the spores, like most mushroom spores, are capable of surviving in soil for many years; they can lie dormant and overwinter for several seasons, outsmarting even those farmers who practice a proper crop rotation program. Cultivation doesn’t seem to affect them too much, either; in fact, this could even help spread the spores. Then, under the right springtime conditions, some of these spores will germinate and produce new spores. These new spores are spread by strong winds or by rainfall heavy enough to cause a splashing effect. From the soil, if they happen to catch a ride and if they manage to land on the right place on a new corn plant, and if the right atmospheric conditions are present during that growing season, these tiny spores will “infect” new plant tissue and grow into something that some chefs assure me is a unique culinary experience.

Now as I take off my farmer hat and put on my food-distribution-guy tie, I have to ask: Isn’t this all about marketing? There are obviously people out there who want this stuff. And with the amount of corn that is grown in Ontario, and even with the “new and improved” disease-resistant corn varieties, I imagine there has to be an overabundance of the smut out there. And this brings us to a fundamental problem in our present food system: too many farmers are growing a single crop for a single market. When they get thrown a curve ball, such as fungus on their corn crops, they don’t have the right contacts in place to turn those lemons into lemonade (or in this case, corn smut into marketable huitlacoche). Then again, I’m sure many of these Canadian farmers would be absolutely shocked to learn that people actually like to eat, and are willing to pay good money for, that blue-black and sometimes slimy stuff that is ruining their corn fields!