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cab

It's Raining Giant Puffballs!

Or it is around here anyway!

In the four little patches of scrubby woods we pick in, we found them on five different sites today. The biggest was twice the size of your head, the smallest around tennis ball size.

Those we picked filled the basket; the gaps between filled up with many species of agaricus (at least five species), some russulas, oyster mushrooms, fairy ring shrooms (could have spent days picking those there are so many) and random other bits and bobs.

The rucksack is also full of good sweet apples. And we've got some lovely autumn growth of cow parsley.

What a day!
Bugs

Re: It's Raining Giant Puffballs!

cab wrote:
The biggest was twice the size of your head


Some heads are bigger than others.....
Bernie66

Is there an reliable way of keeping them or is it pretty much a eat what you find asap kind of food?
2steps

sounds like you had a good day. I didn't know mushrooms could get so big! I haven't seen any mushrooms where I pick, though I don't mind.
nettie

Wow, i shall have to look again. I missed some a few weeks ago, they were nothing but little brown bundles of puff by the time I got to them Sad
cab

Bernie66 wrote:
Is there an reliable way of keeping them or is it pretty much a eat what you find asap kind of food?


Best eaten fresh, but you can cook them and then freeze them. The really young, firm ones can be dried if you're really, really quick about it, and the result is a handy, intensely flavoured mushroom styrofoam, best broken into a powder and stored in a tightly stoppered jar. I dry one every couple of years and use the powder in risottos.

But I'd stress that you really, REALLY have to dry them FAST. They'll try to ripen as you do it, and that means you can't eat them. Oh, and it stinks to high heaven does drying puffballs.

We're phoning round some friends and asking them to help us eat them tomorrow evening Smile
Bernie66

"handy, intensely flavoured mushroom styrofoam" - you are not selling their taste very well Laughing
I can imagine what you mean though, and will give it a go -drying them in the shed rather than the house though!
cab

Bernie66 wrote:
"handy, intensely flavoured mushroom styrofoam" - you are not selling their taste very well Laughing
I can imagine what you mean though, and will give it a go -drying them in the shed rather than the house though!


If you're going to go for it... Slice it THIN, and dry it warm.
cab

We had puffball (dipped in egg and friedn with bacon), chips (home grown desiree, with the skin left on), runner beans and fennel (also from the plot) for dinner, followed by blackbery ice cream and apple crumble (the fruit foraged for). Washed down with lemon balm wine.

I'm feeling rather bloated now, and I'm mulling over how we're going to cook puffball tomorrow. And the next day.

Tomorrow may have to be have two or three mushroom meals Smile
nettie

I'm subscribing to the cooking then freezing theory, it's the first time i've tried it this year, and my parasols didn't lose their shape or texture at all. Very satisfactory. Not tried it with puffballs yet (see above) but it can't be that different, can it?
Lloyd

The fields here are drowning in them. I used the old stale ones for taget pracice the other week!!.............When do they go beyond edible, though?...do they have to be creamy white to be eaten?
nettie

Yep! at the first signs of brownness I reckon target practise is the best thing for them!
Lloyd

Embarassed Nice spelling, eh?
nettie

It's late! Wink
Lloyd

Very Happy True. I'm just too full from a meal out to be able or comfortable to sleep yet!
cab

Egg coated fried puffball slices with chips and runner beans on Saturday... Puffball pizza (pizza base, tomato paste, thick layer of puffball, topped with more mushrooms, chorizo and cheese) followed by chicken and puffball stew... Tonight I'm thinking about either puffball risotto or puffball lasagne (using slabs of puffball layered in alongside the pasta). Maybe even with puffball fritters.
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