Negative. I even went to my local carniceria just to double check yesterday because they carry Herdez.Longhorned wrote:That's a big question, BD. I usually just back into success while in the wrong gear, so I found it offered at a taqueria in Champaign, Illinois. I'd always thought I'd have to try it while traveling in Mexico, and all of the sudden there it was, and without any fanfare. The owners moved here from Mexico City, but they get their huitlacoche locally from corn farmers. Even everyday gardeners are "unfortunate" enough to encounter the "blight". My understanding is that you can buy it canned from Mexican grocers, and supposedly it's great canned, but I don't know anything about that. Either way, my understanding is that you saute it with garlic and onions.BearDown89 wrote:Where do you find it? I'm certain the Albertson's here isn't going to have it in the produce section. Mexican market? Several of those around. Then how did you prep it? Just chop it up and sautee and use it like any old taco/quesadilla/burrito filling with fixins'?Longhorned wrote:Way to cook it up, BearDown89! Mass-produced foods are totally a legit cooking ingredient.
As for the huitlacoche, it's a food for everybody, not just an adventurous travel eater like BearDown89. It isn't strange, you don't have to "develop a taste for it", and it isn't sophisticated. It's just straight-on one of the great foods you've never tried. It's directly in everyone's taste profile already, at the level of comfort food.
I'm not sure what to do about it in Idaho, but on your next visit to Tucson it must exist. How could it be in Champaign and not Tucson? We didn't even get our first Mexican restaurant until 2009, and our first grocery in 2010. I suspect it's all over the place in Nogales.
Huitalcoche is Chilango (Southern Mexico) food. You're not going to find it in Sonora especially. Most Sonoritas wouldn't be caught dead eating it. Mostly has to do with Sonora not being a traditional corn growing region. In Sonora flour is/was king, with quite a few of the prominent family's in Sonora (my wife's family included) owing their roots and fortunes in having the first big Flour mills in the country. It's almost a pride thing.
Not so much recently, but up to a few years years ago waiters/waitresses would shake their head disapprovingly if you ordered flour tortillas instead of Corn south of Navajoa. Huitalcoche being a corn product gets taken along for the ride in this situation.
Northern mexicans dont like Southern mexicans and Vice versa. It stems from all the industry and heavy agriculture ($$$$$) being in the North, and all the lazy politicos in the South mooching them dry.
Whatever the case, Northern Mexicans hate "guachos" and it has bled into cuisine
. I guess tortillas is a strange way of drawing a line in the sand, but there it is. And a little bit of an explanation of why you wont find Huitalcoche in Sonoran territory.
