Once a giant puffball has turned to spores in the middle it's no good. One giant puffball can produce as many spores as there are people on Earth. The best thing I ever did with giant puffball was to cut it into half-inch thick slices, dip it into beaten egg then seasoned breadcrumbs and fry it for a few minutes each side in butter. I can't tell you how good that is with kippers (real ones, not boil-in-the-bag nonsense). I eat a number of wild species round here but my two favourites are horse mushrooms (Agaricus arvensis) and parasols. Horse mushrooms can be huge and satisfyingly meaty. There's a nasty little blighter in the field next to my house that looks like an insipid version of a horse mushroom, the Yellow Stainer. If you scratch the stalk of a horse mushroom it will smell pleasantly aniseedy and may discolour only slightly. If you scratch a Yellow Stainer it discolours quickly to an assertive yellow and it gives off an unpleasant, dry inky smell. Horse mushrooms, in my view, taste even better than ordinary field mushrooms, but they're both superb. If you cut them just above ground level and keep them upright you'll avoid getting nasty bits of grit in the gills. Parasols are delicious but are definitely best picked well before the caps flatten out (and become full of maggots). As with horse mushrooms I just hack them into chunks and fry in butter. Maybe with a bit of seasoning plus parsley and garlic, then eat them on buttered toast. Mmmm. By the way, the suggested consumption of fly agaric is bad advice.
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