Quesadillas de Huitlacoche con Epazote

This is from Ciudad de Mexico. Specifically from the central markets, San Juan, Jamaica, La Merced, where the huitlacoche vendors set out wide enamel basins of the black corn fungus from June through September. Outside of the rainy season, you do not make this dish. Cook what the mercado is selling today, not what you wish were on the shelf.

Let me settle the argument before anyone in CDMX corrects you: a quesadilla in the capital does not require cheese. It requires masa folded around a filling, fried or comaled. Cheese is one option among many. Huitlacoche, flor de calabaza, picadillo, tinga, chicharron prensado, sesos. The chilangos will fight a tourist about this and the chilangos are right.

Huitlacoche itself was nearly lost to industrial agriculture, which treats the fungus as a disease of corn and breeds against it. In the United States it is still called corn smut and sprayed off the cob. In Mexico it is a delicacy and the rainy-season cooks build entire menus around it. Earthy, mushroomy, with a mineral sweetness no other ingredient gives you. The epazote is not garnish. Epazote and huitlacoche grow together in the milpa and they belong together on the comal. One without the other is half a dish.

My mother was not from Mexico City. She was from Jalisco. But she learned huitlacoche quesadillas from a neighbor in Colonia Roma, a senora from Tlalpan who would knock on the door in July with a paper bag of the black galls and say, ya llego el huitlacoche. My mother would press the masa and the neighbor would build the guisado and they would feed half the building. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.