eating smut

I have two food rules.

1) I never eat foods that begin with the letter "c."

2) If I have eaten a dish once, I will never eat or cook that same dish again.

Like most philosophical principles, in practice those two rules are less factual than they are true. But, I generally follow them -- with a lot of lawyerly finagling.

That second rule actually brings me a lot of joy. If I am to avoid preparing meals I have eaten in the past, I need to frequently dip into the creativity bag. 

I do not use recipes. Well, that is not exactly true. I like reading recipes to get new ideas about combinations I may not have applied in the past. I will then take that concept and apply it to a different dish.

The Middle East is famous for combining dried fruits with various dishes. Khoshaf from Iran and tzimmes from Israel are two examples. The fruit is usually combined with other spices to add a powerfully-layered complement to the meat.

I was preparing a burrito last week that had all of the traditional ingredients (for what Americans call "burritos"  -- ground pork, refritos, lettuce, onions, tomatoes, home-made sour cream. A rule two violation in the making.

A scan through the refrigerators for something new uncovered a carton of blueberries I had just purchased. I could see a fusion Mexican-Middle East burrito in my future.

While I was browning the ground pork with coriander and cumin seeds, I started sautéing a shallot and two habaneros that I had cut into strips. I then added the blueberries until they had started to emulsify into the onion-chili mix, and finished it off with a healthy dose of balsamic vinegar before adding it to the browning pork.

The result was a homerun. The fruitiness of the habaneros and the blueberries complemented each other while the habaneros and the balsamic almost eliminated any sweetness. The exact result I wanted. After all, who wants a burrito that tastes like a jelly and pork butter sandwich?

If you are comparing those ingredients to today's photograph, you will not find them because that is a completely different burrito that I constructed yesterday. I had a small bowl of Moroccan tagine (another of those meat and dried fruit stews from the Middle East) that needed an experimental home. It found one on a burrito tortilla.

To keep the Middle Eastern theme, I added a salad of lettuce, cucumber, olives, tomatoes, and onion (what looked like a deconstructed Greek salad), and topped it with the last of my home-made sour cream laced with lime and garlic.

I cannot claim much creativity for the result. It was a half-step away from being a gyros, shawarma, or arayes. But it did prove why similar combinations are so popular around the world.

Yesterday my friend Jennifer Rose published a photograph of a taco she had constructed. Jennifer lives in Morelia and has a very good eye for creating original dishes. This one, however, was in a traditional Michoacán style. The star ingredient was huitlacoche.

If you have never eaten huitlacoche, you have missed one of the world's culinary delights. In its natural form, it turns off some people. It is a form of corn smut. For that reason, the fresh variety is seasonal. (You can purchase it canned, but it is very close to the difference between fresh morels and canned button mushrooms.)

To me, the taste of huitlacoche is similar to truffles. Just a bit more subtle. In the kitchen, it can be used wherever a cook would use truffles. Omelets. Quesadillas. Stews. The possibilities are almost limitless. When I visit Pátzcuaro, I always visit one of the restaurants on the plaza grande for chicken stuffed with huitlacoche.

I wish I could get the fungus fresh here. But it is not in any of the markets. Alex at Hawaii says he thinks he can get it by special order. It is simply not an ingredient in the local tapatio cuisine of Jalisco. At least, I have yet to discover anyone who serves it. I will never use the canned variety again -- except maybe in a soup as a minor ingredient.

All of that will need to wait, though, until I return from my next trip to Oregon on Saturday. I would postpone this trip if I could. After seeing what the Delta variety did here, I will be walking into the Delta lion's den in Oregon. It is running rampant through the state. But the visit is just for six days.

Perhaps, a successful trip will convince some tourists that coming to the Costalegre this winter will be no more dangerous than staying home.

We can only hope. And I will eat to that.