Corn Smut Quesadilla Anyone?

Huitlacoche: From Plague to Gourmet Dish

“Huitla what?” I asked the señora selling corn husks and tamales at the market. I had just spotted something on her table that looked like an extra-terrestrial relative of corn. The normally yellow, firm kernels had morphed into silverish, bloated ones filled with a black fungus. That was my introduction to huitlacoche¹ (translated corn smut or fungus) years ago.

When it comes to corn, or maize, Mexico is where it all started. Its cultivation spread to Europe after the conquest of Mexico. Like any crop, maize can be affected by plagues. One of them is corn smut which according to Wikipedia is “a plant disease caused by the pathogenic fungus “Mycosarcoma maydis.” Spores in the air find their way onto the developing corn cob and transform it into huitlacoche. When this happened to corn crops in Europe, farmers burned the entire field. In Mexico, they scraped it off, put it in a tortilla, and ate it!