Cooking in
Western Australia
Mexican
Cuitlacoche Guisado con Jitomate
A classic Central Mexican preparation of cuitlacoche — the ink-dark corn fungus (*Ustilago maydis*) prized since pre-Hispanic times — cooked down with ripe tomato, serrano chiles, and finished with epazote. The result is deeply savory, earthy, and faintly smoky, with a moist consistency that makes it ideal as a taco filling, quesadilla stuffing, or a side alongside eggs or grilled meat. Diana Kennedy's version is unfussy: the fungus does the work once heat and aromatics unlock its character.
‹Swipe for the next dish›
Cook
I
The Market List
The benchmark for each ingredient, and who stocks it near you. Tap a stockist to go straight to the product.
3 tablespoons
safflower oil
½ cup
white onion, finely chopped
Your own market
3
garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
Your own market
½ lb (about 1 large)
tomato, finely chopped, unpeeled
3
chiles serranos, finely chopped
1½
lbs cuitlacoche (about 6 cups)
1 teaspoon
sea salt, or to taste
Your own market
3 tablespoons
epazote leaves (Dysphania ambrosioides), roughly chopped
II
The Method
1
Heat the safflower oil in a wide, heavy skillet over medium heat. Add onion and garlic; cook, stirring, until soft.
2
Add the chopped tomato and serranos. Raise heat to medium-high and cook, stirring occasionally, until the juices have reduced and the mixture is no longer wet.
3
Add the cuitlacoche and salt. Stir to combine, cover the pan, and cook over medium heat for approximately 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4
Remove the lid. Stir in the epazote and continue cooking, uncovered, for 5 minutes more — until the mixture is tender but not mushy, and moist rather than soupy.
From the canon — Epazote (Dysphania ambrosioides) is one of Mexico's defining culinary herbs — a pungent, aromatic annual with a distinctive smell sometimes described as petr… Epazote — identification and usage →
5
Taste for salt and serve immediately.
III
Sensory Tests
◇Press a fresh gall between your fingers before cooking: it should yield with firm resistance and release a small amount of dark, almost violet-black fluid. Any that feel hollow, papery, or have dried to grey on the exterior are past their moment.
◇Taste the guisado at the halfway point — before epazote is added — and assess whether the liquid in the pan has concentrated to a coating consistency. If the mixture pools and runs freely, continue cooking uncovered; a watery guisado means the fungus has steamed rather than fried, and that sweetness has been lost to the liquid rather than retained in the flesh.
◇At service, the finished guisado should coat a spoon lightly and hold its position on a warm tortilla for at least thirty seconds without bleeding liquid — if it soaks through immediately, reduction was insufficient.
◇Rub a leaf of fresh epazote (Dysphania ambrosioides) and smell it against a pinch of the cooked guisado: the resinous, slightly petrol-edged note of the herb should be detectable in the finished dish but not dominate. If you cannot smell it at all, the epazote was added too early or was already past viable; if it overwhelms, it was added too late and cooked too briefly to mellow.
◇Where it lives or dies. The dish lives or dies in the first three minutes of cooking the cuitlacoche in hot fat over high heat — this is when moisture must be driven off aggressively so the fungus fries rather than stews. Drop the heat or crowd the pan and the galls collapse into a waterlogged mass that no amount of subsequent cooking will fully rescue.
Pillar IV
Cross-cuisine parallels are part of membership.
The dishes this one teaches you, across the cuisines — on every recipe.
Enter · from $49 a year
V
What to Pour
The pairing
Agave spirit
From Western Australia
Nothing from Western Australia holds against this yet.
Without alcohol
No pour without alcohol holds against this yet.
Why each one works is part of membership — Enter · from $49 a year →
The whole pairingPillar VI
Origin and lineage are part of membership.
Where the dish comes from and how it came to be — on every recipe.
Enter · from $49 a year
The working kitchen