Culinary Smut

Earlier this week, Mitsy and I were out in the garden checking the status of our vegetables, picking some zucchini and cucumbers and just enjoying our garden area in general. Mitsy went down to see how close we were to start harvesting corn, when she saw a couple of the cobs that had some sort of blight on them. She called me over to investigate and in walking over I was greeted with this monstrosity.

 

This was the first crop of corn I have ever grown myself and I had never seen anything like this. Pulling out my trusty phone, I quickly Googled "blue mold on corn". I quickly had multiple images and articles come back about blue mold on a corn crop and so I began reading to see what I needed to do to protect the rest of my crop from being overcome with this blight.

 

Imagine my surprise when I found out this stuff was actually edible! While it can spread and infect a whole crop of corn, it can also be a delightful culinary experience. While generally in America, this stuff is referred to a "Corn Smut" (not a very appealing description), it has quite a history with our South American neighbors. In Mexico, it is commonly known as huitlacoche or cuitlacoche (pronounced QUEET-la-coh-chay).  It is commonly sold in markets and can fetch upwards to $3 a pound! It is most often used in soups and quesadillas, although searching more on the web, I found a host of recipes for it, including ice cream!

 

I , however, was still not convinced. I posted the picture above on my Facebook page and soon had several comments from friends recommending it as good eats. So I researched some more. The fungus usually occurs when rain/moisture get down into the growing corn cob and the kernels begin to rot. Still doesn't sound very appetizing, but the amazing thing is the transformation that occurs, in not only the way it looks, but the nutrient value skyrockets. Corn is pretty much devoid of lysine, one of those "essential amino acids" that the body requires but can't manufacture. We need it to fight infections and strengthen bones. However huitlacoche is loaded with it! It also has more beta-glucens than oatmeal.

 

So after reading all this, I decided to pull the four "infected ears" and try making a dish with it. After pulling the ears, I plucked off all the blue knobby kernels.

 

 

It looks almost like some kind of blue-gray deformed popcorn at this point. I had also picked a couple of jalapeno's, some cilantro and some tomatoes out of garden to go with my smut creation. In a large pan I sautéed the jalapeno's (seeds removed, you can add more if you like it spicier), 2 cloves of garlic and about a quarter of a sweet onion. Once that was cooked down, I rough chopped the huitlacoche and tossed it in. The larger fungus have black spores in them that look kind of like the underside of a Portobello mushroom. These are edible as well, although from what I understand the younger fungus has better/more acute flavors. Either way, the fungus kind of turns black and tarry looking anyway when its cooked. After sautéing on medium-high heat for a few minutes I cut the heat and added it to a warmed tortilla that had a bunch of slightly melted Mexican four-cheese mix on it. Then I cut up a fresh garden tomato and chopped up some of the cilantro and added this to my creation as well. 

 

I then wrapped up the whole concoction and topped with some salsa verde, a little taco sauce and a what was left of the fresh cilantro. It ended up looking like the picture below.

 



 

It was completely delicious! The huitlacoche has a flavor that is both earthy and sweet. The only way to describe it is a fresh corn flavored mushroom flavor. It mixed well with the other ingredients and my only regret is that I did not have more in my garden to add. I would also like to try the other recipes I found online. I highly recommend you try this odd looking yet tasty smut! I believe you can buy canned versions of huitlacoche online (I think amazon sells it) or probably at a local latin food store. I am only guessing, but I would imagine that fresh would be much better than canned. While I don't want my whole corn crop to turn into corn smut, I wouldn't having more of this in the future growing in my garden. 





The Garden As It Grows

Well the last fence post is in and the final bit of mesh has been nailed. The garden is in full swing and growing like crazy for the most part. Our beans, probably doing the best of all.
When I first planted the beans, I planted two different kinds; one labeled pole beans and one garden beans. Now regular old garden green beans as I remember from gardening with my folks as a kid, just grew in a row, maybe about a foot high, and then you picked them. This would then start the next part of the process, which was sitting out in the back yard with a basket of green beans by your side and a tupperware bowl in your lap. Snapping green beans to prepare for freezing and drinking lemonade was a summer backyard past time at our house.

Anyway, so back to the plants themselves. My pole beans are doing fine, growing up the old monkey bars I have set up in the garden to use for a trellis with pole beans on one side and pickling cucumbers on the other. Then I also planted a row of garden in a seperate area.  They were growing great, except they are still growing, and have crazy tendrils coming off of them going all over the place like the pole beans. No, I didn't mix up the plantings, because I still have the package of the "garden beans" stuck at the end of the row, and the pole beans are in the garage since I still have most of the packet left.  Anyway, the garden beans, which don't have beans on them quite yet, look like this:

They are still fairly "bushy", but I'm not sure what the deal is with the tendrils, unless this is another type of green bean that I haven't planted before. Guess I will have to get some more mesh and give them something to climb on.

Last night I decided the kale I planted was large enough to cut and eat. I was pretty excited about eating fresh kale from the garden, plus my sister told me she has a great recipe for a kale and italian sausage soup! So I took a basket and went out and filled it with fresh cut kale. I brought it in and washed each leaf by hand, as I had noticed that something had been eating little holes in a lot of the leaves, and also when inspecting the leaves closely, I noticed some of them had little "eggs" from some type of bug stuck to the underside. However these were only on some of the larger leaves and were easily removed with a gentle rub under running water.

I filled a large pot with the kale, added some water and salt and set it on the stove. I am a big fan of just boiled kale with some vinegar or butter and salt added. Good summer eats! After letting it boil for just a few minutes, I proceeded to fill my plate with this first harvest from the garden. It was then that I noticed little white "thing" on one of the leaves. Upon further inspection it was some sort of little catepillar looking bug. I believe it is from some type of moth that had been laying those little eggs on the under side of the leaves. After going through the rest of the pot, I found enough of these to decide I didn't really want this kale, and ended up tossing the whole pot of it. I was disappointed to say the least. Not really sure where these things were hiding when I was washing each leaf by hand!

After doing some research I have decided to do a couple things differently when I harvest my next batch of kale. I am going to pick it when it is smaller, since it appears that most of these eggs and catepillars were on the largest of the leaves. Next I am going to soak all of the leaves in the sink in water with some salt for a bit before doing the individual cleaning and cooking. This should help get rid of any crawlers. I'll keep you updated on how the next batch goes.  Such are the struggles of organic gardening!

 

Our tomato plants have gotten quite large with plenty of blossoms, we have one tiny eggplant coming in so far, and we have a couple of jalenpeno's that are just about ready to be picked. I still love spending tme in the garden every day even if I am just sitting there watching the birds and looking at my budding crop. It is my place of zen.

 

 

Beginnings of a Backyard Oasis

I realized this week that it had been quite some time since I had posted anything for this blog. My original intention was to use this to not only share recipes, but to also write about the beer brewing, the house and yard projects, the music writing and any other craft type things that happen at the Crosshatch. But alas I have not kept up with the writing. Mainly because for the past two and a half months I have been building a split rail fence around our yard and another around the garden. Digging each fence post hole by hand doesn't leave me much in the mood to then blog about it. By I will try to do better at updating going forward and give you a little bit of insight as to how it has gone thus far.......

On March 28th I brewed 10 gallons of an IPA with my friend Jason. You can view this brew session on my brewing video link over there on the right of your screen if you are so inclined to have an extract beer brewing lesson. The following afternoon a truck arrived at my house carrying a load of a little over 700 feet of split rail fence materials. When the driver first arrived in back down to the area next to the garage where I wanted the materials, but then asked me if I had anything to prop under his tires before he got out of the truck since the brakes weren't working so well...not very reassuring, but I went along with it, grabbing a couple of logs off the woodpile and shoving them under the front tires. Once this was completed, he jumped out of the truck and unhooked the straps on the back of the flatbed. At first I thought we were going to have unload the rails and posts one by one, but he said that wasn't necessary as the back of the flatbed lifted up. Cool. So he raised the flatbed up, however all the wood just sat there on a slant about 3 or 4 feet off the asphalt. Suddenly he gunned it, and the truck shot up my driveway while all the wood flew off the back into a pile! It was nuts! He then handed me the receipt out the window, waved goodbye and was off. Well my rails seemed none the worse for wear after their short flight, although now that I have worked my way through the majority of the pile, it does seem I ended up with about six broken rails that had the ends crushed when the stack of posts landed on them.

  Now that we are nearing the end of the first week of June, I have completed fencing the front yard, down one whole side of our property, and around the garden. I have about 8-10 posts left to put in along the back of the property that were left over and giving us more fence than what we originally planned on putting in this go around. I have also successfully meshed the whole side yard fence so far which is now effectively keeping the neighbor dog from charging us or leaving us his poop presents to clean up.

As you see in the picture below I have also put up the fence around the garden we planted. So far we have in tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, green beans, cucumbers, pole beans, kale, beets, sunflowers, corn, swiss chard (although it is barely making it) and last night we planted a blueberry bush in a big half whiskey wooden keg. This in addition to the three rows of strawberries that were already there. And we have plans on adding more soon.

Front Gate Area of the Garden Fence

 

We still have lots more weeding, mulching and tree trimming to do, but the beginnings of our backyard oasis is starting to emerge. There are still plans on building a deck, adding a fountain, plus another water feature (waterfall and pond) in the back corner of the yard below the garden as sort of a zen garden/mediation area. Although these are future projects that most likely will not be happening this year!

I enjoy the gardening part and it is actually a nice break after digging each fence post by hand. I tried renting a one-man post hole digger but took it back after two hours of frustration. I can actually dig much faster manually since after about six or eight inches down, the ground is hard pack clay. The power digger would just spin on top of this clay and not really make much headway. I have had two occassions where after getting down about 2 feet I hit a solid boulder and could go no further and had to cut off part of the bottom of the post. Most of my holes I run down about 28 to 30 inches. In other cases I hit rock and just went around it, so the fence isn't solid straight, but perhaps more of a slightly rambling style which I have decided is just rustic charm. :) More soon!

Front right corner looking out over the garden

Bathtub Celery

My fiance and I have been chompin' at the bit to do some gardening in the new plot. But since we currently haven't built any coldboxes and only a week and a half until Christmas, our options are a bit limited. However with a little research and ingenuity, there are some options for indoor gardening to get you through the winter, no matter the season or location.

On Thanksgiving day, we, like most Americans, were cooking up the holiday meal for family who were coming for dinner. Mitsy, my fiance, was making her delectable stuffing, which of course includes celery. Having cut off the main stalks, we were left with the bottom core of the bunch of celery we had purchased. This was promptly set on the counter to await further usage.

About three days later, the core was looking a little wilty, so Mitsy grabbed a stray pot that had been sitting out in the front flower bed and filled it with dirt from said bed. Digging a hole in the dirt in the center of the pot, she covered it with some additional dirt, watered it down and set it in the bathtub in our spare bathroom.

The spare bathroom is in need of some renovations and plumbing updates, so we don't use that tub/shower. There is a window just above the tub however, that lets in a lot of nice afternoon sunlight and keeps the temperature fairly warm, even when the heat is turned down in the house. Its almost like our own little green house, at least as temperature is concerned.

Within a few days we had a couple of sprouts pop up through the soil, and now just three weeks later we have the small stalks growing as you see in the picture.

Our next goal is to try garlic, along with a mixed array of herb seeds that I just ordered in various pots including cilantro, chives, and I think oregano, basil and lavender, although I'm not positive of the total mix since they haven't arrived in the mail as yet. I think these will keep us busy until we can start the spring seedlings for our garden plot. Stay tuned for more updates........