As Todd L. Disher quipped last week in the lead of his piece for Alaska’s Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman newspaper about Carlile Transportation driving instructor Phil Kromm, “it’s only natural an episode of ‘Ice Road Truckers’ would spawn a series of culinary classes focused on gourmet wild game.”
Kromm, see, is an avid propane griller of wild caribou and other Alaskan delicacies, which he butchers and dresses himself. Kromm ended up, in his words, as a “secondary character” in the Ice Roads season devoted to the Dalton Highway, or “the Haul Road,” between Fairbanks and Prudhoe Bay, but he’s starring now in wild-game-devoted culinary classes at Fairbanks’ Allen & Petersen Cooking and Appliance Center. Fellow Fairbanks resident Debra Black, after seeing his culinary expertise displayed on an episode of the History Channel’s trucking series, got in touch and offered him a teaching spot with her.
“You can’t buy wild game, so he donates all of it for the class,” Black told Disher. “He has three freezers and a couple of snow banks full of game.”
If only we could all tolerate the cold so well. We’d probably eat better, though I guess there’s always venison. Kromm contends caribou is loaded with Omega 3s. Check out the full story here.
