Surfish’s “Peruvian Pork” (Photo/Chef Miguel Aguilar)

A good roasted pork can find its way onto just about every Latin American Christmas dinner table. There’s the Cuban lechón, a whole pig marinated in citrus and garlic and cooked low-and-slow in a caja china. The Puerto Rican pernil, a juicy shoulder cut rubbed with garlic and herbs and oven roasted. And then there’s Peruvian pork, flavored with aji panca, a unique chile virtually unknown outside of the Andean region. Smokey, sweet and fruity all at once, the heat from this chile is precisely what makes Peruvian pork—well—Peruvian. We asked 43-year-old Lima-born Chef Miguel Aguilar, winner of the Food Network’s “Chopped” competition last summer and owner of Brooklyn’s Surfish restaurant, to share his recipe. Aside from the aji panca, Aguilar also uses soy sauce. “Peruvian food has a lot of fusion,” he says. “It has no barriers.”

Aguilar serves his Peruvian pork, pictured above, on a bed of mashed sweet potatoes and tops it with fresh salsa.

Peruvian Pork

10-pound pork shoulder
15 whole cloves of fresh garlic
1 big red onion cut in large pieces
15 ounces aji panca paste
2 quarts chicken stock
3 cinnamon sticks
1/2 cup of soy sauce

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

2. Place the pork skin side up in a large roasting pan, and pour the chicken stock over it.

3. In a blender, puree the garlic, onion, aji panca paste and soy sauce for about a minute, or until pasty. Add a little of the chicken stock to the puree to make it pourable, and pour over the pork.

4. Add the cinnamon sticks to the liquid and season with salt and pepper to taste. Cover the roasting pan with aluminum foil and cook in the oven for 3 1/2 hours. No basting is needed. Remove from oven when internal temperature reaches 165, and allow to rest for 15 minutes before cutting.

5. To serve, place individual slices of pork on a bed of sweet potato puree, drizzle with the pork juices from the roasting pan, and garnish with freshly made salsa.

Originally published on NBCLatino.com.