Yum! Reviled Fungus Infects Corn and Restaurateurs Start Cooking : Trends: Farmers used to plow under corn smut as waste, but now it has a new name and a high price. ‘Maize mushrooms’ may be served alone or as flavoring in meat, soup, sauces and even ice cream.

It’s repulsive-looking, and farmers call it corn smut. But when the fungus swells yellow corn kernels into a gray mass, Cristina Arnold sees a fortune in the rediscovery of an ancient delicacy.

Chefs and diners are taking a liking to corn smut, also known as “maize mushrooms” or “Mexican truffles.” Interest is strong enough that agricultural scientists are seeking ways to cultivate it and a few farmers are adopting a new attitude toward something they once plowed under as nature’s garbage.

“It is the ugly duckling of the mushroom kingdom,” said Arnold, owner of El Aficionado in Arlington, Va., a food wholesaler specializing in Mexican fare. Her company annually supplies restaurants with 2,000 to 4,000 pounds of maize mushrooms.

“It has an element of texture, but it’s a soft texture,” Arnold said recently. “Like caviar or truffles, it is not particularly beautiful to look at. You don’t consume it for its looks, you consume it for its taste. It has an earthy flavor, but it does taste somewhat like corn.”

The Aztecs called it cuitlacoche (weet-LA-coo-chee). Wind-borne spores infect the corn, and in about two weeks the kernels swell into a silvery-gray fungal mass.

Places serving maize mushrooms include the Plaza Hotel in New York, the New Heights restaurant in Washington, the Harbor Court Hotel in Baltimore and the Hyatt in San Antonio, Arnold said.

The fungus can be cooked up as the foundation for a dish or as a flavoring in food as diverse as meats, soups, sauces and even ice cream.

Rick Bayless, owner of the Frontera Grill in Chicago, uses cuitlacoche in a layered casserole with tortillas.

“A lot of the people who come here have great familiarity with Mexico. We don’t serve it as something that’s very exotic,” he said.

Increasing interest in maize mushrooms prompted University of Georgia scientists to seek ways to promote growth of the fungus. They also want to find out whether corn smut is really pay dirt.

It seems to be. Farmers get mere pennies for a normal ear of corn, but $1 to $2 per pound for maize mushrooms--about two ears’ worth, one researcher said.

Grady Thompson, who is raising 300 acres of corn this year on his Tift County farm, said corn smut is “a mess. It totally destroys the corn. I’d like to see it become an alternative crop that we could make money on.”

Bob Moore, general manager of Lady Bug Farm in Spring Grove, Ill., who supplies Bayless’ restaurant, said most farmers shun corn smut.

“None of them would ever consider eating corn smut. They make a face,” he said. But he added: “I think I could sell more if I pursued it. People have been asking me if it’s available.”

David Pope and States McCarter, plant pathologists at the University of Georgia, are pursuing it.

They believe smut spores land on the corn silk and travel down to the ears or infect them through small holes in the husk made by insects or hail. A higher infection rate was achieved by injecting spores into the cobs with a syringe, Pope said.

Natural infection usually occurs in 1% to 5% of a corn crop. Pope and McCarter’s method boosted that to 80% to 90%.

For three years Arnold has been touting cuitlacoche to farmers, alerting them to its moneymaking potential and teaching them when to harvest infected ears.

“A lot of farmers thought I was running a scam,” Arnold said. “They thought I deserved to be in a mental institution, but as they see the profit potential, they’re slowly changing their minds.”