Farmed caribou

I can't tell if all the reindeer in Alaska, such as the $5 sausage served with pickles and grilled onions in downtown Anchorage, is a gimmick for summer tourists or a traditional part of the Pacific Northwest table. But it sure is everywhere, in fusion dishes like the reindeer chili, served with corn chips, and in reindeer salchipapas, grilled reindeer sausage served on a bed of grilled potatoes and chimichurri sauce.




There's also oodles of smoked fish and fried fish, such as the popular beer battered, fried halibut, every type of jerky you could possibly imagine, and Russian treats like piroshky, yeast dough with ground beef and cheese sold at street fairs.



Some advice: If you go to Alaska, better bone up on your salmon factoids, as it's all Alaskans talk about (at least the tour guides). There are apparently five types of Pacific salmon, chum, coho (silver), chinook (king), sockeye (red) and pink (humpy). I won't pretend to fully understand the "life cycle," but I'm told salmon start as eggs, hatch into alevin, start swimming around as fry and either spend a few years in the river or go straight out to sea as smolts, where they grow into adults for 1 to 6 years before heading back to their birthplace to breed.

In Providence, R.I., a taste of the Dominican Republic

I've been meaning to post a link to a great food story my colleague, Philip Marcelo, reported in May about the Latin street food scene on Providence's West Side, a growing phenomenon that reflects the city's growing Latino population and the growing demand for cheap eats during the recession.

"Broad Street is also where many of the city’s 'chimi' trucks –– the converted trailer homes and ice-cream trucks serving cheap fried eats, like Perez's –– have made a home. Around dinnertime, anywhere from 10 to 15 of them are lined up along Broad Street, in the few blocks around the nightclubs and bars. It's especially noticeable as the weekend approaches and the weather gets warmer."

The food trucks, with august and boastful names like Con Sabor a Pueblo, La Universidad de Chimi, Johnny's Chimi, and La Casa de Chimi, all serve chimichurri, "a sandwich of seasoned beef, pork or chicken packed with fresh tomatoes and coleslaw on a toasted roll that is a fast-food staple from the Dominican Republic," Marcelo reports. "There's also frituras (morsels of salty fried meats), longaniza (sausage), pastelitos (empanadas), pinchos (kebobs), yuquitas and tostones, not to mention the standard-fare French fries and sugary fruit drinks. Here, five bucks goes a long way."

Read the full story here.

Photo by Ruben W. Perez for The Providence Journal.

Asado in the oven

The guests at Lara and Paco's apartment in Providence included Colombians, Ecuadorians and Argentines. So not surprisingly, the menu was heavy on delicious, high quality meat and pork, prepared and presented with traditional simplicity and abundance.


For appetizers, Lara and Paco served choripán using pork chorizo from Armando & Son's Meat Market in Pawtucket, R.I., served on fresh bread with chimichurri sauce. They also prepared bacon-wrapped asparagus.




The main course was asado, a popular, relatively inexpensive, uniquely Southern Cone rib cut. Because it was raining, they roasted all the meat in the oven, including the chorizo. My wife, Keryn, prepared the salad, chopping lettuce, red bell peppers, grape tomatoes and avocado.




Among the gallons of red wine consumed was a great bottle of Malbec from Altos Las Hormigas in Mendoza, Argentina.