Thursday, October 19, 2023

Unexpected harvest

For the curious: the giant puffball is edible when its flesh is white, before it reaches the gills and spores and fun stage. We were given a 15" wide one the other day. They do not keep long, so you have to deal with them quickly.

Basting a slab with olive oil and garlic and a few other seasonings and grilling it like a steak works ok, though the result is much like eating tofu. I would think sauteeing thin slabs in butter will be good, but it's a bit late to try since we dehydrated the rest already, resulting in several quarts of mushroom powder. I'm told the powder works very well as an ingredient for stock.

Our neighbor's parent's farm produced a lot of them this year.

UPDATE: A word to the wise: my daughter put the dehydrator in their garage for this exercise, since the mushroom aroma was intense.

1 comment:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

We have them in NH, but they are not common. I wouldn't bother to go looking.