In Mexico, the cradle of corn cultivation, September is the glorious harvest season for the nation’s basic food stuff. 

It’s the time of year you find vendors on street corners and village squares selling elotes – corn on the cob – freshly picked from la milpa (cornfield). Buy them raw to carry home to the kitchen.  Or get them already cooked and steaming hot for a quick and nutritious snack. 

Some folks like them steamed in large metal vats, still wrapped in their leaves. Other prefer them peeled and roasted on a charcoal brazier. The most popular seasoning is a rubbing of coarse sea salt and lime juice, and a generous sprinkling of powdered chile. Another choice is a slathering of rich cream and crumbled cheese. 

Cursed with aged choppers, I lament that eating elotes this way has become an insuperable challenge. Thankfully, I usually have the option of ordering esquites en vasito, kernals sliced off the cob, loaded into a cup, and seasoned to taste. 

Newcomers to Mexico tend to quickly pick up a taste for the immense variety of dishes based on masa de maiz, the thick dough made by grinding up dried field corn treated by nixtamalization, a process of soaking and cooking the mature grains in solution of slaked lime. Aside from the basic tortillas and crispy tostadas, the array of antojitos (little cravings) includes tamales, tacos, flautas, quesadillas, sopes, enchiladas, gorditas, chalupas, huaraches, and tlayudas, to name a few.

Nothing warms the heart (and tummy) better than a platter of pozole, the classic hominy stew usually cooked in a giant pot together with hog’s head and other cuts of pork. Jalisco is famous for pozole rojo, seasoned and colored with a sauce made from a variety of red chiles. Green chiles and condiments are used in pozole verde. Pozole blanco is made simply of unadulterated hominy brewed in a savory broth. 

I’ve sampled tasty seafood and vegetarian versions, but my favorite type is pozolillo, commonly made this time of year with tender corn instead of hominy, chicken and pork and green sauce.  

According to ancient legend supported by historical research, pozole was originally a ritual feasting food, made with the flesh collected from human sacrifices.  Nowadays, true connoisseurs order pig ear, snout, cheek and other parts as the protein of choice. 

The most exotic of all menu items that fit into the corn category is huitlacoche, known in English as corn smut.  It’s a weird looking fungus that sprouts on ripe ears of corn during the latter weeks of the rainy season.  Silvery white on the exterior when fresh, it exudes an inky liquid when heated.

Huitlacoche is a coveted ingredient among traditional and gourmet cooks in central Mexico, less appreciated in this part of the country. Employed in a variety of dishes, it has a smoky mushroom flavor with a hint of corn than outweighs the unappealing color.

Domesticated in Mesoamerica at the dawn of human agriculture, maize was derived from teocintle, a wild grass.  Corn remains as the foundation of the daily diet for modern day Mexicans, and a symbol of their cultural and gastronomic roots. And the rest of the world’s people can say ¡gracias y bueno provecho!