Corn pudding is simple enough. Juice some corn kernels, put the juice on low heat for about twenty minutes and stir as much as you can remember. The result is a thick…Uh, corn pudding. The heat activates the starches or something like that, I don’t actually know how or why it works, just that it works. I made a batch last week, allowed it to cool, and just sort of absent mindedly seasoned it with some shio koji. You know, made it taste really good, then stashed it away in the walk-in. Flash forward about five days. I opened the lid and there was a bit of a burp. Hmm. Did it go bad already? I took a whiff. It smelled fine. Tasted it. Whoa. Yeah, fizzy, funky, delicious.

The explanation? Well, the shio koji in the bottles, although salty as hell, still contains koji but it’s been put on hold by the salt. Throw a few dashes of it into something, allow the salt to dissipate some and then the koji begins to activate as the salt content begins to bleed out. I’m not sure if this is an actual thing but I made another batch and we’ll have to see.

Anyway, it made the “cornpico” in the Corn Identity even more magical, weird, and yummy.

Cornpico

2 parts Calpico (housemade)

1 part corn pudding

1 part corn stock syrup