Babi panggang karo — Karo, Indonesia

Babi panggang karo, often abbreviated BPK, is a pork dish associated with the Karonese Batak people of the highlands around Berastagi and Kabanjahe in North Sumatra, Indonesia. The name combines babi, pork, with panggang, roasted or grilled, and karo, the ethnic and regional name, and the dish typically keeps the skin and a portion of fat on the meat rather than trimming it away. It is closely tied to Karonese cuisine, which is largely practiced by the Christian Karonese community and therefore uses pork freely, unlike much of the surrounding Muslim-majority region. Warungs specializing in babi panggang karo are a familiar sight around Berastagi and Kabanjahe and have also spread to the wider North Sumatran capital, Medan, where the dish is served for everyday meals as well as at family and church gatherings. Preparation usually starts with boiling or parboiling cuts of pork, often belly and skin, until partly cooked, after which the pieces are roasted, grilled over coals, or fried so that the skin crisps and browns. The meat is then chopped into pieces and combined with a pounded sauce built on andaliman, a citrusy, tingling pepper native to the Batak highlands, along with chili, shallot and lime juice; some cooks enrich the sauce with fresh pork blood, though versions without it are also common. What sets this dish apart from other Indonesian roast-pork preparations is the andaliman itself, which gives the sauce a numbing, lemony sharpness rather than the spice-paste profile used in, for instance, Balinese whole-pig roasting. The exact balance of chili heat, sourness, andaliman and blood in the sauce differs from one cook and one warung to the next, and is usually treated as each kitchen's own signature rather than a fixed formula.