El Agave, Corn Fungus & Tequila

This weekend we went to El Agave in Old Town, which is the second largest Tequilería in the world.





They have over 800 bottles of tequila – it is like being in a library of tequila! D was like a kid in a candy shop, or perhaps more aptly, like an adult in a library of tequila.

The food is an blend of Baja, Sonoran & Aztec Mexican. The Tlacoyos Cuitlacoche (blue corn masa tlacoyos, stuffed with black beans and cuitlacoche (corn fungus), salsa verde, cheese and onion) were the best thing I’ve ever had! I found a recipe for tlacoyos cuitlacoche and am going to try to track down corn fungus and avocado leaves. But until then I’ll settle for making Black Bean Tlacoyos, which calls for normal supermarket ingerdients (well, if you live within 100 miles of the border).


A little about cuitlacoche:
The Aztec named this dark growth found on corn huitlacoche which translates to "ravens excrement". The Aztec's fashioned the fungus into dishes of crepes, soups, and tamales. American farmers call it "smut" and "devil's corn" and consider it a disease to be irradiated. The peoples of Mexico as well as the American Hopi Indians consider the fungus a delightful delicacy.

Today in Mexico the product is actually cultivated each season providing an ample supply to be eaten fresh, then frozen and canned. While the product is not easy to find in the U.S. most typically it can be purchased canned.

Corn smut is a disease of maize caused by the pathogenic plant fungus Ustilago maydis. Although it can infect any part of the plant it usually enters the ovaries and replaces the normal kernels of the cobs with large distorted tumors analogous to mushrooms. These tumors, or "galls", are made up of much-enlarged cells of the infected plant, fungal threads, and blue-black spores. The spores give the cob a burned, scorched appearance. In fact, the name Ustilago comes from the Latin word ustilare (to burn).

For culinary use, the galls are harvested while still immature — fully mature galls are dry and almost entirely spore-filled. The immature galls, gathered two to three weeks after an ear of corn is infected, still retain moisture and, when cooked, have a flavor described as mushroom-like, sweet, savory, woody, and earthy. Flavor compounds include sotolon and vanillin, as well as the sugar glucose.