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Produce => Edible Plants => Topic started by: peanuts on August 18, 2019, 06:52:51
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While most of my sweetcorn cobs are normal, and good, some have behaved in a weird way and sort of exploded. Some of the individual grains (but not all) on a cob have puffed up many times larger, and are pale grey, soft and puffy - and revolting! I've never seen this before. Any idea what it happening? I've included a couple of photos, but it is difficult to show in a photo.
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Looks like this:
Corn smut fungus, suggests that it is edible, but I have never been that hungry....
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ustilago_maydis_de_3.jpg
www.cropscience.bayer.com/en/crop-compendium/pests-diseases-weeds/diseases/ustilago-maydis
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One particular corn smut is more than just edible https://www.thespruceeats.com/what-is-huitlacoche-or-cuitlacoche-2342705 - the second link in the last post above implies that it is the one you have.
In Mexico it's regarded as highly as truffles. but on the other hand not everyone likes truffles.
Cheers.
PS. A few years ago Jeremy Cherfas wrote an article in Kew magazine saying that the incredibly unusual and unexpected cross that produced what we call corn/maize would never have been found if they hadn't been scouring crops of the original (less productive) species for Huitlacoche. Fascinating stuff! Hard to imagine the complex civilisations in Mexico and parts south ever emerging without maize. Incidentally, one of its names is "excrement of the gods".
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Yes, ancellsfarmer, that's exactly it! Thankfully it has only affected perhaps half a dozen out of 60 plus cobs. I don't think I'd chance eating it! I've never come across it, in more than 40 years of growing sweetcorn.
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I would have to try it, just to see what it is like. Perhaps if it spreads and you get enough you could sell it to a posh eatery. A mound of mush and the mark of Zorro, £100 a plate.
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Rick Stein featured some sweetcorn like this in his recent cooking tour of Mexico. Proper gourmet stuff apparently. Must admit it didn't appeal to me at all.
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A fair trial would have to involve someone who definitely likes truffles (ie. rich enough to have paid for the real thing in quantity).
I have ordered things in restaurants (because of their main ingredients) almost despite the menu saying they had truffle or truffle oil in them - but they weren't pricey, so I expect we are talking homeopathy here*... Needless to say I couldn't taste any difference.
BTW when I wrote about "god manure" - it's a name used for smutty corn, not ordinary corn. Reading it now it could have been read the other way.
* Homeopathy does work - but in only one aspect - it contains no truth at all but that just makes people believe it more!
Cheers.