Many years ago, roaming the aisles of a supermercado in Mexico City, my brain popped a few neurons when I picked up a plastic-wrapped corncob that had a section of fat, swollen, grey and black and furry kernels. Corn smut. Fungus. A scourge among American corn farmers, a delicacy in Mexico called huitlacoche. I quickly came to love the stuff, inky, toothy-mushy with a murky, dusky, mysterious taste, a little tangy, if I recall right. I ordered it every chance I could in restaurants, on tacos, in quesadillas, soup. But it’s been a long time since I’ve had the mushrooms, because they’re tough to find in Montreal. The puerile but entertaining Steve of thesneeze.com’s "Steve, don’t eat it!" says huitlacoche smells like corn that forgot to wipe. Diana Kennedy, who exposed Mexican cooking to Americans much as Julia Child did for French, calls the fungus "perfectly delicious." Seek it out, and you be the judge.