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. 

Culture Camp- Part 1

William and TG at the Alaska Native Heritage Center

This is going to be a few posts because I took a LOT of photos.

Last month, my children and I had a chance to go to a culture camp. If you're not indigenous, culture camps are a way to learn about our heritage from Elders and people who live a traditional life. This one was a mixed culture camp, centering on Traditional Foods for the various indigenous people from Alaska. We were really excited about it.

It took place at the Alaska Native Heritage Center. This is definitely a place you should visit if you're ever in Anchorage. They have a village area set up in the back of the museum with the various building structures used by the tribes up here. The grounds grow a lot of plants that are used traditionally for food and medicines. It's educational and interesting and they focus on creating opportunities for Native peoples. There are young interns who do presentations, and there is dancing and indigenous artists selling beautiful things.

My family is Tanana Athabaskan. We come from the interior, even though my children and I have lived in Anchorage our whole lives. If you have younger children, you may be watching Molly of Denali with them. Molly is Athabaskan too.

The first day of camp, a whole bunch of us were processing salmon for canning. So we went straight to work. TG, William and I were in the classroom a little early, so we helped the teacher set up.

Salmon is preserved in a lot of ways, and canning is a modern one and important. We learned how to pack salmon into jars, why our teacher preferred jars to cans and we cut and packed up a lot of salmon.

TG processing salmon

At the end of the day, I asked TG and William if they had fun. They had worked, listened to a presentation on safe canning methods, and we walked around the museum some. I also got myself a pair of baleen hair sticks from one of the artists on side.

They both agreed it was a whole lot of fun. 

The qaspeq that TG is wearing is one that belonged to her grandmother. It's about 50 years old. You can get my free qaspeq coloing page here-Qaspeq/Kuspuk Coloring Page. 

A couple days later, we got to work on canning the fish. 

The salmon was packed into the jars raw. You can see what it looks like before and after canning in this photo. Canning it cooks it, and the bones soften so much that they can be eaten. A good source calcium!!  Canning can also be used to preserve other meats using a pressure canner. Our local extension service has instructions for canning walrus!! Becky told us how she made her canned moose stew. 

We also had a class on safety procedures. That was good. TG won a water bottle in that class and she was really happy. 

I missed a class on plants because I had an appointment. TG and William took extensive notes and enjoyed the class a lot. They both came home with jars of yarrow salve from that class. 

The plant class I did take, taught by Meda DeWitt was about nettles. We went out and picked some nettles, and stripped them. We learned about how to use the seeds to make a tincture, how to use the leaves for tea and food, and then made a simple hand-spun twine using the fiber. 

Then we got a presentation from Chef Sean Sherman. That was fantastic. If you don't know who Chef Sherman is- he is a James W. Beard award winning chef with a passion and vision for indigenous foods. He is also known as the Sioux Chef. 

I went totally fangirl when I found out he was going to be here! A couple friends of mine from Minnesota who had been to some of his presentations told me how much I was going to enjoy it. 

An Elder gifted him with some muktuk (whale fat and skin) that he shared. It was the first time that my children had tried muktuk. It was not the last time that week they had muktuk. They both loved it. Chef Sherman said it tasted like the sea. 

Chef Sean Sherman sharing muktuk. 

His vision is wonderful. It's about creating new recipes and learning the old recipes. Finding how which foods have been traditionally harvested in various regions, wild foods, foraged foods. He wants to empower indigenous people to set up businesses both for supply and finished products such as restaurants. It is an exciting vision and you can find out more at The Sioux Chef and NATIFS.

If you're interested in Chef Sean Sherman's book, you can buy it using the link below. Amazon affiliate links won't affect your price, and the small commission they pay helps fund this page.

Eating Weeds: Dandelions

I was just asked on Facebook about eating dandelions.

The answer deserves it's own blog post, not just a reply to a comment.

Dandelions are one of those superfoods in every way. Every part of a dandelion is edible. My family doesn't eat the stems, because they take some preparation and can cause stomach upset. But the rest of it we do. Fortunately, when my children were little they blew lots of dandelions and my lawn is not chemically treated.

First thing: Make sure your dandelions come from places that are not treated with chemicals or close to busier roads with exhaust particulates that will fall on the dandelion. You don't want to eat those things.

Okay, have a safe place to harvest?

In the spring, young green leaf rosettes can be pulled up or cut off at the base. Rinse them, pat them dry, and fry them in a tempura batter for a nice treat.

Later in spring, start looking for buds close to the ground, the buds should be tightly closed and sort of squared off at the top. A tapering bud like formation is after blooming but before going to seed. A new bud tapers down to a rounded end at the stem and has a flat wide top in comparison to the base. (I'll post a picture here later). The buds can fermented like pickles to use as a substitute for capers. I have some fermenting now! You'll use a basic salt brine, plus seasonings you like. Mine have garlic, red pepper, onions and peppercorns in them. A basic salt brine is 2 Tablespoons of salt to 1 qt of water. Clean all your ingredients, chop your onions if you're using them, and put them in the brine. Weight it down using either specially made weights, a smaller jar full of brine or a small zip bag full of brine. Make sure all your vegetables are completely submerged. Put the top on the jar finger tip tight and put it in a warm but not too warm part of your house. Check every day to make sure that it's not building up too much pressure. You'll see bubbles forming, that's normal. If the button on the top of the jar won't press down, relieve the pressure by carefully opening it just a little. After two weeks, check the tartness and if it's where you want it, put it in the fridge to slow (not stop) the fermenting. Eat within a couple months. If you want it more sour, let it ferment longer. Watch for mold, but as long as everything is properly submerged, there shouldn't be any.

Also in spring, young leaves can be used in salads. They are delicious, and considered a bitter.

Dandelion blossoms can also be fried, made into jelly or made into wine. A quick internet search will turn up a lot of recipes for dandelion wine.
My Dandelion Jelly Recipe
My Fried Dandelion Recipe 

You can rinse and freeze dandelion blossoms for later use in wines or jellies. Rinse, use a salad spinner to extract excess water or even squeeze it dry, freeze in single layers, then put in a labelled bag in your freezer to make the jelly when you have time.

For fried dandelion blossoms, any basic tempura batter works just fine though.

Older but not huge leaves can be boiled as any other vegetable, then used in soup. Discard the boiling water. Boiling helps get rid of some of the oxalates.

The bigger they get, the more bitter they get, so there is a point where you won't want to eat them.

The seeds can be collected, and threshing them lightly in a paper bag then using a fan to blow away the fluffs makes for a free seed that you can use to grow microgreens in the winter. Just sow as you would any other seed. They can also be sprouted, but I find microgreens a more effective use of time, plus if you miss some fluff, it won't matter with microgreens which you are cropping.

Dandelions are high in vitamins A, C, K and a good source of dietary fiber.

In the late fall, you can dig up the roots, cut them up and let them dry to hard, roast them either in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit or toast them in a cast iron skillet. Store in an airtight jar. A decoction made by simmering the root in water makes a tasty non-caffeine coffee substitute.

More dandelions on this site include:

Dandelion Printable Recipe page

Dandelion and Bee coloring page

Dandelion Lined Paper Printable