Puffballs are the huge, solid, football sized mushrooms that children seem to automatically kick around when they come across them in the fields at this time of year. Sometimes they are even bigger and, in the arms of a child, get photographed for the newspapers. You may have heard that they are edible - that is, in their early days. As they mature, they dry out inside and if you open them they emit a cloud of brown dust, like pepper.
Giant puffballs, we call them. They are edible, in those early stages, and one friend tried them, sliced and fried in butter. He was not impressed. But Philippa Davenport, writing in the magazine Country Living for September, recommends you to experiment. She says they make "a supremely good dish when carefully cooked and served like Wiener Schnitzel." That is, you beat up an egg, dip your half inch slices of puffball in it, then trawl it through a pile of breadcrumbs, then fry, and afterwards garnish it, if you like, with anchovies, hardboiled egg, capers, olives, parsley and whatever you want. Or you could cut out some of the trimmings.
If you want to do the best for the puffball, before starting you can blanch your puffball slices i.e. drop them into fast boiling water for about five minutes, drain, cool slightly and dry well with kitchen paper. Oh, and before dipping the slices in the egg, you should have dusted them lightly with flour. The same writer tells us that they keep well for a week, if close wrapped and refrigerated. The flavour is like that of your normal field mushroom the safe kind that we all know. Lycoperdon Maximum is the given Latin.
A note indicates that the flesh should be white, or just mildly yellow. It soon goes yellow or brown. The only friend who ventures beyond the field mushroom occasionally has coprinus comatus, or lawyer's wig or shaggy inkcap, for breakfast. There's a new and safe one for him. Main rule in fungi hunting don't do it without having an expert to consult. We all know that French, Germanys and others get great joy hunting for fungi, but they have learned and we have not. You may eat what you buy in shops. Don't be too adventurous in the fields.