A week's worth of firsts

We had a great, Romesco sauce-fueled test screening at Austin Film Society last week as part of their esteemed Narratives-in-Progress series (our deep thanks to AFS for inviting us and to Bryan Poyser for moderating).

We also sent off our fine cut for our first festival submission on Saturday. You're savvy--you know which festival I'm talking about. We don't need to get into all that. Suffice to say, we're doing our best to get good festival premieres--both at home and abroad.

But my favorite news of the day is a great (surprise) write-up in the Village Voice. I think "...Alice Waters meets Kelly Reichardt" is a pretty good summary.

Giant Puffball Update

We shot our puffball footage, and as promised, here are a couple of different frame grabs.

This Calvatia gigantea was a real beauty--and it fried up nicely in panko bread-crumbed cutlet (shout out to Gary Lincoff for his preferred culinary application).






A scene from "Lucien and the Giant Puffballs" (with apologies to Roald Dahl).










On our way to shoot, we found another log covered in oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus). The cultivated varieties are nice, but I find the flavor much more intense when they grow in the wild.

Roasted in a hot oven (400-425º) in Spanish olive oil is my preferred cooking method for these.

Rehearsing with Giant Puffballs

This post's image will be featured on cloth bags and t-shirts that we'll give away as 'thank you' gifts for our upcoming Kickstarter fundraiser. Stay tuned!

We were in Prospect Park yesterday for a rehearsal--co-director Julia Halperin, co-lead Tiffany Esteb, and myself. We played a game of cribbage (which figures into the narrative) and set out to check some spots in the park where I've seen Giant Puffballs (Calvatia gigantea) in past years.

It's still way too dry around NY--the precipitation predicted with Hurricane Earl missed us entirely. So I wasn't too optimistic.

We wandered a bit, checking my spots for other wetter-season mushrooms along the way. Everything was dry and dead. But I had heard reports over the Labor Day weekend of puffball discoveries up in the Palisades and had even spotted a patch alongside a busy NJ highway on Saturday afternoon (never pick puffballs near a roadside--they accumulate lead from exhaust fumes of days gone by).

When we finally got near my sacred puffball grounds, my greatest fears were confirmed. A giant puffball alongside the trail...turned to fluffy white shrapnel by someone's foot. Now, I can understand the temptation--giant puffballs are about the size of a soccer ball. To a kid, it might seem the natural thing to do. But to a mycophile, mushroom kickers are not cool.

I stood there among the fungal carnage, staring down into the shreds and chunks of perfectly white, homogeneous flesh that would have been so nice fried up in crispy Panko cutlets. Then Julia let out a little gasp. A few feet away, just on the other side of a low wire fence, was another perfect puffball--bigger than my head.

We hunted down the trail further, and found another three large and lovely GP specimens to overfill our baskets. Plus a log with about 2 lbs of absolutely fresh and perfect oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus).

After rehearsing, we walked back to Grand Army Plaza with heavy baskets and tired arms. We stopped to watch the West Indian Day Parade with all the beautiful people and flashy costumes going by. But even with all that glitz, our mushrooms caught a few eyes.

I'll post some puffy pics later, after we shoot some B-roll.

The Short, Dry Summer

There's a helluva lot to do, and not much summer left to do it all.

Casting supporting roles. Locations. Filling out our crew. Trying to raise a few more production dollars. Rewrites. Production design. Rehearsals. More rewrites. Scheduling. Budgeting. Testing equipment. Meetings...

It might be a blessing that much of New York and New Jersey has been experiencing an unusually warm, dry summer. If it wasn't such a crummy time for foraging, I'd be much more tempted to be out prowling Western New Jersey for chanterelles and black trumpets rather than sitting in front of the A/C in my Brooklyn apartment preparing for an October shoot.

I still get out of the city once a week or so...and I've thankfully been finding just enough edible fungi to stoke the fires. I crossed paths with the chicken mushroom (Laetiporus cincinnatus) pictured above last Sunday. Nothing makes a finer tempura than fresh, young chicken mushroom, in my opinion. It also takes to braising very well. I've also had a pretty good summer for different bolete species, but very few chanties and no lactarius or black trumpets to date. Such is life.

And so, while the Mister Softee trucks are still rolling, we'll be busy laying the groundwork for production...and praying for a massive deluge of rainfall come September. The mushrooms must be ready for their close-ups.