A comforting pernil dish for family gatherings

WNYC News

The taste of a family recipe can bring back a flood of warm memories. WNYC's Community Partnerships Desk set out to hear from New Yorkers across the city about the memories that come to mind from certain family recipes. We've asked you to share what comes to mind when you think about a certain dish. This week we hear from Sophia Pelaez, a resident of Queens, who shares her family's pernil dish.

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

I'm 17 years old and I'm from Queens, New York, and my family is from Ecuador. The recipe that comes to mind when I think of family, I think of my mom making Pernil, which is like a pork shoulder. It's a cultural dish back in Ecuador. Every family gathering, they've asked her to make it. Over the years, I just see the hard work she puts into it just so that everybody in our family can enjoy it.

My grandma, my dad's mom, she used to make pernil. She learned a whole process. Not just for a pork shoulder, but for a whole entire pig. It's also known as Hornado in order to support her family because my grandpa wasn't around. She taught like the people who sell in the market all how to make hornado and then it's done into pernil.

My mom is very close to her and just keeps it going. So for me, it takes from like the hard work of my grandma, the hard work of my mom, and then the effort that I want to put in as well. She inspires me to input my own dishes into family gatherings. I started making pumpkin pudding, vanilla, like strawberry cake.

I realized like, even if it's a smaller dish, it's really hard to make. I think back to how my mom, even the night before, she starts blending up garlic. She starts, like, cutting up vegetables. She gets the pork shoulder, and she grabs a huge aluminum tray, and she starts, like, rubbing in all the blended sauce into the meat, and then puts it into the fridge.

Every time, I have to go help her, because it's so big, and we have to clear out the fridge. Then she wakes up early to put it into the oven. The whole house smells like, pernil it and I have to shut my room door or else all my clothes are gonna smell like it. When I smell it, it's kind of comforting because I know that like I'm gonna see my family soon and when I eat it, it's like so delicious.

I just know that it's made with love.