Air fried puffball recipe

 

My family does a lot of foraging in spring/summer/fall and one of our favorites has always been puffball mushrooms.

Usually puffballs in Alaska don't get much larger than a golf ball, compared to the soccer ball sized ones down south. But the last few weeks have been very rainy and we've found a lot of bigger ones, closer to tennis ball sized. 

My kids and I liked them cooked differently. My favorite was cooked with scrambled eggs, my daughter liked them sauteed in butter with a light sprinkle of salt and garlic. 

Then my son came up with a recipe for air fried puffballs that has rapidly become everyone's favorite way to eat them. (more on identifying and preparing puffballs after the recipe) 

Air fried puffballs: 

You will need:

Puffball mushrooms

1 cup panko crumbs

1 cup dry grated Parmesan cheese (yes, the stuff in the green can, not fresh) 

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp salt

flour (on a plate, small amount for dredging)

one lightly beaten egg (in a bowl) 

olive oil spray

Mix panko, cheese, garlic and salt together. 

Clean and cut the puffball into nugget sized pieces.  Dredge them in the flour then coat in the egg, then roll in crumb mixture.

Lightly spray with olive oil. 

Put in the air fryer at 425F for 7 minutes then turn and cook another 5 minutes. 

Leftover crumb mixture can be used on onions or dandelion blossoms. (we have!!) 

These are fantastic. The inside is soft, gooey and good, the outside is crunchy and delicious. The egg provides a bit more crunch than using milk. They have become so much my daughter's favorite that she has eaten them 3 times this week. 

So finding puffballs- 

Puffballs are one of the safest and easiest to identify wild mushrooms around. There are some look-alikes which are poisonous, but slicing the mushroom in half will show you if it's safe to eat edible puffball. 

Puffballs are round, potato shaped or pear shaped. Not "mushroom shaped". 

When you slice open a puffball, what you are looking for is a solid white marshmallow like interior. 

There shouldn't be a trace of anything that looks like gills, or an immature mushroom. Gills or a standard mushroom shape on the inside indicate it's an immature amanita and could be poisonous. 

A solid interior that is yellowing, greening or browning show that it's too mature for eating. 

What you're looking for is that solid white marshmallow interior. 

We clean our mushrooms with a damp coffee filter or a soft brush and we don't peel them because they are so small here. Larger ones can be peeled. The exterior of a puffball can be slightly bitter. 

Some of us are foraging coloring page

First- this design IS available on a shirt without the striped background at my Redbubble shop.

You can get it here- Foraging Shirt

But you can also download and color this page.

Click the images below for larger versions to print and color.

Some of us are foraging small jpg version:

Some of us are foraging lg transparent png version:

Tasty Mushrooms

Isn't that interesting?
As you can imagine, in Alaska, in the winter, there isn't much fresh, locally sourced produce. During the summer, there are a bunch of farmer's market. In the winter months, there is only one. This time of the year, that one is all stuff that stores well in cold cellars like parsnips and carrots. There is also one guy who imports seasonings and exotic mushrooms who also grows mushrooms.

I admit. I totally bought the one because it was so interesting looking. Unfortunately, I didn't write down the name. The other two are black chanterelles and shitake mushrooms.

People think of exotic mushrooms as being expensive because of the price per lb. The chanterelles above were 14.00/lb I think? But it doesn't take much to add a wonderful flavor to things. I spent about 9 dollars on mushrooms and had enough for pasta for 3 for lunch yesterday. That wonderful, interesting looking one, probably about 20 shitake mushrooms and 8-10 chanterelles.

First I cleaned them all. The black chantrelles can be gritty, so I tore them apart and brushed them, then gave them a quick rinse. A damp paper towel for the shitake mushrooms, and a damp paper towel and quick rinse for the interesting one.
Then I sliced up the big one. Under all those folds is a fairly solid piece, so I sliced it, then cut each slice into quarters. Because it was my first time trying that one, and it's been a long time since I had the black chanterelles, a simple cooking method seemed best so I'd know what kind of recipes they would work best with in the future.

I put 3 tablespoons of olive oil and 4 cloves of garlic and a half teaspoon of dried lemon peel in a skillet and heated it up, then put in the mushrooms and cooked them down a bit, stirring constantly, then added in some grey sea salt and parsley to finish. Served it over angel hair pasta with Parmesan cheese for Michael and William. I had mine without the cheese so I could really taste it.

The big interesting one had a good and meaty flavor that will work very well in a marinara sauce instead of meat. The black chanterelles will be wonderful in wild rice as a side dish and well.. I like shitake mushrooms quite a bit. In or with almost anything.

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In other news, as you know, my husband is currently looking for a job, so considering ways to make money in the interim. Recently, I was asked to do a sponsored post. After careful consideration (about a minute) the answer has to be no. While I'm willing to review books or products that I get from publishers and manufacturers, you know (or at least I hope you know) that I'm not getting any compensation for the reviews, and that they are my honest opinion. The only way that I can justify doing sponsored posts is if I've personally tried the product or service. As far as selling ad space goes, that I'm more willing to do.

The plate above is the salad plate from Rachael Ray's Little Hoot (Amazon.com affiliate link) set.

Snail mandala and coloring page

Snails are cool!
I originally started drawing a snail mandala, but decided that it should also be front and center as a coloring page, and possible put on a box later. Click on the images for larger versions to color, transparent PNG.

BeadTool4

I recently wrote a review of BeadTool 4 that you can find here on the BellaOnline beadwork site. I'm really impressed with it. In the article I used some pictures I took of mushrooms to show how nicely the photo conversion works.
I just used one of those wild rose pictures I took this summer and converted it to a 50x50 peyote stitched pattern.

This is the photo I used.

 

The realistic bead image, set at size 12 for export.

 

Indexed, unshaded beads, same pattern. It also generated a color list.

1-DB-1482 Transparent Lt Rose Luster Count:666
2-DB-1267 Matte Transparent Olive Count:402
3-DB-1484 Transparent Lt Moss Green Luster Count:148
4-DB-279 Lined Green/Maroon Luster Count:409
5-DB-310 Jet Black Matte Count:69
6-DB-436 Galvanized Pewter Count:46
7-DB-1406 Transparent Pale Grey Count:49
8-DB-1497 Opaque Lt Sky Blue Count:12
9-DB-281 Lined Pale Blue/Magenta Luster Count:50
A-DB-1054 Matte Metallic Violet/Gold AB Count:18
B-DB-422 Metallic Magenta  Count:226
C-DB-1310 Transparent Fuchsia Count:142
D-DB-1340 Silver Lined Bright Fuchsia Count:54
E-DB-1184 Galvanized SF Magenta Count:62
F-DB-355 Matte Rose Count:91
G-DB-157 Opaque Cream AB Count:41
H-DB-121 Dark Topaz Gold Luster Count:15
As usual, click on the images for the full sized view. I really really like this program. It won't replace the way I usually graph, but for photo conversion it's really wonderful.

Mushrooms and Magpies

These mushrooms are poisonous but oh so pretty. The picture with 2 in them, Mike said the tops looked like a very fancy dessert, so now I'm planning a custard dessert that will look sort of like that.
I love magpies so much. We get lots in our neighborhood, but usually they fly off before I can get a good picture. I need a better camera. But this one almost looked like it was posing for me.
Click on the images to see larger versions, the larger versions aren't huge so they will be quick to load.