It came as a total surprise to me. I don’t really buy much corn of any kind, but on my first day back at the Union Square Greenmarket after a month away one of the first things I spotted was a striking small stack of huitlacoche-covered ears of organic corn in Tyler Dennis’ Alewife Farm stand.

Huitlacoche, or ‘corn smut’, is an ancient delicacy with a smoky, earthy flavor used to flavor Mexican dishes of many kinds, but I had never seen it before in the wild, so to speak.

I have no experience cooking Mexican dishes, but I do appreciate unusual ingredients, and remembering that pasta does as well, I decided I’d marry this precious fungus with an artisanal spaghetti, more or less making up my recipe as I went along.

It was every bit as interesting and delicious as I’d expected.

• nine ounces of an artisanal spaghetti (Pastificio Setaro F. Lli pasta di semola di grano duro, Lavorazione artigianale Torre Annunziata Napoli) from Buon Italia inside Chelsea Market, cooked al dente, tossed with a sauce made by sautéing one minced garlic clove from Stokes Farm and a small/medium spring red onion (picked up from Jersey Farm Produce that afternoon at our very local 23rd Street Chelsea Down to Earth Farmers Market) in a little olive oil inside a large antique copper pot until both had softened, adding a small minced section of a seeded fresh jalapeño chili pepper from our neighborhood Forager’s Market near the end, followed by 5 ounces of fresh huitlacoche cut from a rinsed ear of organic corn from Alewife Farm (I read that the black residue is okay, and in fact it’s the main objective, and that a bit of corn silk remaining is also no problem), plus the few kernels in their more familiar, original form, the fungi cooked slowly for about 10 minutes, or until soft, after which a little dried Sicilian oregano, dried Sicilian wild fennel seed, and some crushed smoked dried serrano pepper from Eckerton Hill Farm were added and the mix allowed to continue simmering for a couple of minutes, the drained spaghetti then tossed in and mixed with the sauce, some of the pasta water added and everything stirred over a medium-high flame until the liquid had emulsified, seasoned with sea salt to taste, the now-finished dish arranged in shallow bowls and garnished with toasted pine nuts from Buon Italia and chopped fresh parsley from Stokes Farm, a bit of olive oil drizzled around the edges
• the wine was an Oregon (Willamette Valley/Dundee Hills) red, Erath Oregon Pinot Noir 2016, ordered directly from Erath
• the music was Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s ‘Das Wunder der Heliane’, John Mauceri conducting the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Radio Chorus, with Nicolai Gedda, Hartmut Welker, Martin Petzold, Anna Tomowa-Sintow, and others