by Greg Marley
Once coated, pop them directly into your favorite cast iron skillet or wide sauté pan into which you have already added generous quantities of butter. Fry them over medium heat for at least 4–5 minutes per side until they are fully cooked and browned. Enjoy them hot as an appetizer, main dish, side dish, breakfast, lunch, or snack. Whatever coating or fat you use, this is the most common method for cooking wild morels across the hinterlands of America. And it is good!
SAUTÉED MORELS IN A CREAM SAUCE
15–20 fresh morels or reconstituted dried, cut in half if large
1 large shallot, chopped fine
1 large clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
¾ cup chicken stock
¼ cup white wine
1 cup heavy cream
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Put olive oil in heated pan over medium heat. Add garlic and shallots, stir and sauté until softened but not brown. Add butter until melted, then add morels. Stir and cook until mushrooms are soft, about 3–5 minutes. Add wine and chicken stock, salt and pepper, and cook for 5 minutes. Add cream and cook on low until thickened somewhat. Do not allow to boil. Additional ground pepper is nice here. Enjoy over egg noodles or fettuccini, or alongside rice or couscous.
This can be made easily with chicken. I use boneless thighs cut into generous bite-sized bits. Start by browning the chicken in olive oil over high heat. When well browned, remove chicken from the pan, set aside, and continue with the rest of the recipe, adding the chicken back in with the wine and chicken stock.
PUFFBALLS
Genus: Calvatia and Lycoperdon
Species: C. gigantea, C. craniformis, L. pyriforme, etc.
As I walk through the woods or along the edge of a field (or even as I am driving in my car) and spot a desirable edible or medicinal mushroom, I get a zing of electricity that quickens my heartbeat and brings a grin to my face. The hunter, at last, has his chosen prey in sight. When I come upon a giant puffball, Calvatia gigantea, (#3), or a group of these fungal behemoths lounging in a field, that zing is instead a jolt as I see the immense bounty of mushrooms before me. Puffballs are many mushroomer’s first edible.
Picture a balloon, generally spherical, straining at the confines of its envelope and packed with all the air it can hold. The puffball represents the most obvious fungal strategy for maximizing the number of spores an organism can make and distribute in a given area of space and volume. It is a round ball ranging in size from a marble to much larger than a basketball and, at maturity, is completely packed with spore dust. The entire interior mass of the puffball is composed of gleba—spores and the hyphae needed to support their growth—surrounded by a thin envelope of skin and, in some species, a base or column of sterile tissue to raise the spore mass above the surface of the ground.
TAXONOMY
Puffballs are categorized as gastromycetes (“stomach fungus”) because they make spores in their “stomachs.” This is a relatively large and diverse group of fungi with a number of genera. In the northeast United States the two most common genera are Calvatia, composed of medium to large puffballs more commonly found in open grassy areas, and the much smaller Lycoperdon. These small to medium puffballs usually are found in the woods and, when mature, release their spores through a small apical pore or operculum at the top of the fruiting body.
Puffballs tend to be found more commonly in drier regions of the world because producing spores within an enclosed sac reduces the risk of their drying out in desert air before maturing. For suburban or rural American kids, a mature puffball is great fun to kick or throw around since a cloud of an almost unbelievable number of spores will explode from it on impact. Studies carried out (no doubt by unpaid graduate students) have estimated that a 12-inch-diameter giant puffball matures somewhere in the neighborhood of 7–9,000,000,000,000 spores. Yes, that means 7–9 trillion! According to David Arora in Mushrooms Demystified, 7 trillion puffball spores lined up side to side would circle the Earth at the equator, and if each spore produced one mature puffball, they would reach to the Sun and back!10
But it’s the immature puffball that interests those of us who collect them for the table. A young puffball is firm and fairly dense. If, when it is sliced longitudinally from top to base, it is pure white inside, you have a mushroom worth eating, or at least trying. As a puffball ages, the tissue becomes soft and slimy, turning yellowish or greenish yellow or even purple in one group. At this stage it not only looks less appetizing, it becomes quite bitter. You wouldn’t get sick from one yellowish puffball, but the bitterness is pronounced enough that one bad mushroom will spoil the pot. Eat only firm puffballs with pure white centers.
DESCRIPTION
Along the coast of New England, we commonly see five species of puffballs with good cooking potential, although others also occur. These same species and a number of similar and edible cousins are found regularly across much of the United States and Canada. West of the Mississippi River, in the prairie and mountain states, there are far more species of puffballs, quite a few with great edible potential; consult a regional field guide in your area for local species variations.
The giant puffball, Calvatia gigantea (#3), is a large to huge white-skinned puffball that normally grows to about 16 inches in diameter, not uncommonly up to 24 inches, and at times exceeds 3 feet. The body is a bit more broad than tall, resulting in an irregular globose shape. Its cream to white surface skin thinly covers the gleba with no sterile base. The gleba is initially pure white and firm, and slowly ages yellowish to olive green as the spores mature. When mature, the skin irregularly flakes off, exposing the olive-green to yellow spore mass to the elements for dispersal. C. gigantea is a saprobe that feeds on dead vegetation and generally is found in open fields, field edges, or occasionally in forested areas (including under a Norway maple in our area). It can fruit singly or in scattered groups and, rarely, in arcs or fairy rings.
The smaller purple-spored puffball, Calvatia cyathiformis, is also a denizen of fields and lawns and also can be found in roadside ditches and along grassy shoulders. The fruiting body is up to 8 inches across and of generally equal height. Initially round with a flattened top, the fruiting body develops into a somewhat pear-shape; picture a loaf of bread sliced in half or the shape of a skull. The purple-spored puffball develops the same shape in longitudinal cross section. Unlike C. gigantea, the purple-spored puffball has a thick layer of sterile tissue along its base that serves to elevate the spore mass above the soil surface. This persistent sterile cup often can be found well into the winter and spring, months after the spores have dispersed, as a shallow purple cup-shaped remnant. Like its larger cousin, C. cyathiformis has an interior that begins as firm pure white gleba and with age becomes purple and goopy as the mass of spores begin to mature, and finally a mass of purple powdery spores. Edible when young, firm, and pure white inside, it is considered by some to be choice and by others as a passable edible. Given its skull-like shape, it is ironic that I see it most frequently in graveyards in New England. The similar C. craniformis is known as the skull-shaped puffball and is equally edible.
If you spend much time in the woods in late summer and fall, the gem-studded puffball, Lycoperdon perlatum, is the most common species of puffball you’re likely to see. Individuals, small groups, or occasionally, as I found recently in a spruce plantation, troops of hundreds of these 1–3-inch puffballs grow on leaf or needle duff and rarely, on well-rotted wood. The individual puffballs are somewhat pear-shaped, white to cream in color, and covered with a fine coating of small spines or scales, giving the appearance of studs. As the fruit ages, these spines generally wear off and leave faint circular outlines in their passing. The interior of the puffball starts firm and white and soon softens and changes to yellowish and then greenish. Though gem-studded puffballs are edible when they’re young and white, by the time the color changes the taste becomes quite bitter. Instead of the gene
ral disintegration of the skin as in Calvatia, the Lycoperdon species develop a small opening called an operculum at the apex of the body through which the mature brownish spores are released by the action of raindrops and wind.
From a distance, the pear-shaped puffball, Lycoperdon pyriforme, closely resembles its gem-studded cousin. Both tend to be smaller than 2 inches in diameter, grow commonly in clusters, and are found primarily in late summer and fall in the woods. On closer examination, however, several differences emerge. L. pyriforme is found growing on well-rotted wood, especially stumps and logs lying on the ground and less often on rotting organic debris on the ground. The individual fruiting bodies are pear-shaped with a sterile base, as in L. perlatum, but tend to be more elongated and have only minute warts, almost granular in texture, across the surface. It is common to see thick white strands of mycelium called rhizomorphs trailing from the sterile base of this puffball when it is pulled from the ground. It is considered equally edible when collected in the young, firm, pure white stage and equally bitter if eaten when it’s too mature.
There are a number of other less common puffballs. If you intend to expand your list of edible puffballs, identify the new type to species and, as with all new edibles, sample a small amount initially for desirability and safe eating.
POISONOUS LOOK-ALIKES
There is one group of easily distinguished puffballs that can cause problems if eaten. The genus Scleroderma (“hard-skinned”) contains several common species that are quite distinctive in two ways. First, the outer skin of the fruiting body is thick and tough when fresh and leathery when dry, lending the common name “pigskin puffball” to at least one member of this group. The second is that the interior gleba of these puffballs is a dark gray to purple-black color from a very early (and firm) stage, making it unlikely that one would mistake it for the white flesh of an edible puffball. Scleroderma puffballs have been known to cause moderate to severe gastrointestinal distress.
Lycoperdon marginatum, sometimes called the peeling puffball due to its habit of sloughing off its studded skin in small sheets, is another species to avoid. Though generally reported as edible when young and firm, this species has been shown to contain hallucinogenic compounds and is reportedly used in Mexico as an intoxicant. There have been no complaints regarding people experiencing hallucinogenic episodes in the United States that I can find, though it has caused some incidences of gastrointestinal distress in the western states.
CAVEATS
It’s important to pay attention to the interior of any puffball you intend to eat to ensure that the flesh is gleba and it’s not an immature Amanita button. Amanita mushrooms start out as small rounded buttons at ground level, completely enclosed within a membrane skin called a universal veil. When they expand into the mature fruit, the veil ruptures, leaving behind remnants of a sac attached to the base of the mushroom or scars of the universal veil on the swollen stalk base and “warts” or patches of the veil tissue scattered across the cap. In the button stage, poisonous amanitas occasionally have been mistaken for puffballs. However, the longitudinal cross section of an amanita button will always show the outlines of the cap and stem, not the undifferentiated flesh of the puffball. Each year there are reports of unwary mycophiles eating immature amanitas mistaking them for puffballs, primarily in the western United States. Be aware and eat warily!
ECOLOGY, HABITAT, AND OCCURRENCE
Puffballs are primarily saprobes, feeding on partially rotted plant material from leaf and grass or on dead rotted wood. Some grow and fruit on disturbed, packed ground without an obvious food source. Most grow on well-rotted wood or in open grassy areas. At times, species such as C. gigantea form arcs or fairy rings of fruiting bodies.
EDIBILITY, PREPARATION, AND PRESERVATION
There is little consensus regarding the gastronomic merit of our gastromycetes. Gary Lincoff, in his Audubon Guide to North American Mushrooms, practically raves about puffballs, giving most a “Choice” rating.11 Other mycophiles, including Michael Kuo, are lukewarm about eating puffballs, opining that they merely take on the flavor of the butter used for cooking.12 After my initially excited stage of dining on puffballs as a young adult, I left them behind for most of twenty years as I expanded my repertoire of edible fungi to include more famous gems. I came to appreciate again the flavor of the giant puffball several years ago when I entered one in a public tasting of four common autumn mushrooms simply sautéed in olive oil with salt and pepper. When compared with the sulphur shelf, horse mushroom (Agaricus arvensis), and hen-of-the-woods (Grifola frondosa), the puffball stood proud. It brought home to me just how tasty puffballs can be. Butter flavor indeed!
PUFFBALL PARMESAN
This is a variation on a recipe attributed to Hope Miller. This can be used with the giant puffball or with other medium-sized varieties.
1–2 pounds puffballs, sliced into ½-inch slices
2 eggs, beaten with 3 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon salt
1–2 teaspoons freshly ground pepper
1 cup flour
¾ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (or mix of Parmesan and Romano)
¾ cup dry bread or good cracker crumbs
4–8 tablespoons butter or butter/olive oil mix
Use firm white puffballs. Clean the puffballs, cutting off the base and removing any soil. Some folks prefer to peel them; I don’t. Slice into ½-inch rounds. Beat egg and milk in wide shallow bowl. Mix together flour, cheese, breadcrumbs, salt, and pepper in a second shallow bowl. Melt butter and add oil in a wide, shallow, thick-bottomed pan and heat until hot, but not smoking. Dip slices into egg mix and dredge in crumb/cheese mix. Fry puffball slices until well browned on both sides. Drain on paper towel and serve hot.
SULPHUR SHELF OR CHICKEN MUSHROOM
Genus: Laetiporus
Species: L. sulphureus
Imagine walking through the woods in Maine in the early fall. Your senses are filled with the deep moistness and myriad shades of green and brown with gradations of reds, yellows, and light touches of blues and purples. In the midst of this palette, you come upon a large fruiting cluster of the sulphur shelf, or chicken mushroom. The brilliance of the bright orange and lemon yellow colors is visually over the top and can be seen from a great distance. (See #5 in the color insert.) There are few mushrooms able to compete with the sulphur shelf for sheer radiance and ebullience. With its large overlapping clusters gracing the side of a tree or on a downed log, it is eye-catching and pulse-quickening for those who know how tasty this mushroom can be.
TAXONOMY
At one time, essentially all mushrooms having a leathery or woody texture and whose spores were generated from pore-like openings were classified in the genus Polyporus. As we learned more about mushroom taxonomy, various groups were split out of Polyporus and into separate genera and today there are scores of genera in the family Polyporaceae. The sulphur shelf was placed in the genus Laetiporus. Though Dr. Christensen treated the sulphur shelf as one entity, we now know that it consists of a complex of closely related species within the genus. The species in the sulfur shelf complex are found throughout North America and Europe and can grow on a wide range of tree hosts. In New England we find bright orange and yellow L. sulphureus growing on the wood of hardwood trees. L. cincinnatus is found growing in a rosette pattern on the ground at the base of hardwoods, usually oak. It has a whitish pore surface and a more pale orange-pink cap surface and is equally edible (some say superior) to the classic sulphur shelf.13L. huroniensis is a saprobe on overmature conifers, but this is somewhat rare in Maine and more common in southern New England and the northern Midwest. In the western United States, L. conifericola is generally found on conifer wood as the name implies. Finally, L. gilbertsonii generally is found growing on eucalyptus in the western United States.14
DESCRIPTION
The sulphur shelf is seen first emerging from the wood of a standing tree or downed log as a series of pale yellowish globules that develop orange to
ps with yellow edges and undersides over the following days. At this young stage the flesh is quite soft, tender, and juicy. It bruises easily and can exude copious amounts of a yellowish liquid. Over the course of several days to a week, the fruiting body develops into a set of overlapping shelf-like projections with thin and, at times wavy, margins. (#6) The top remains bright orange until faded by sunlight and age. The pore surface is sulfur yellow with 2–4 tiny pores per mm that become visible as the fruit matures. The spore color is white. On a large log or tree, clusters of fruiting shelves easily can total in excess of fifty pounds. As the fruit matures, it becomes increasingly tough and almost woody in texture, though the growing margins of the individual shelves often remain tender.
CAVEATS
An important note of caution! Over the years, there have been a few people who react to the sulphur shelf with moderate gastrointestinal distress, and occasional reports of numb lips and tingling tongues. When you eat this mushroom for the first time, eat a small portion and see how you tolerate it. I have seen an estimate that up to 10 percent of people cannot tolerate the sulphur shelf. This seems way too high a number when compared with my observations over the years and the documented reports in the literature. However, I personally know several people who are unable to tolerate it. The reason for the reactions has been discussed by many and is understood by few or none. Certainly, it should always be thoroughly cooked before eating, as sulphur shelf contains a toxin neutralized by cooking, and undercooked or raw mushrooms will sicken people. There are those who believe that those related species growing on conifers, such as L. huroniensis and L. conifericola, will cause GI distress and should be avoided. Others, especially on the West Coast, believe that the mushrooms fruiting on eucalyptus confer toxicity. Still others will place the blame on individuals eating specimens that are too old and tough. Perhaps as the mushroom-eating public develops a better understanding of the differences among species, the cause of sulphur shelf toxicity may become clearer. Until then, enjoy this mushroom in a young stage, collected off hardwood trees, cooked well, and, if it is your first time, try a small portion to confirm that it is a mushroom friendly to your chemistry.
