I rarely cook meat, you know. But the case of rolls is, let’s say, emblematic. 🤭 As I told you in the recipe for pork loin rolls, rolls rarely appear on my table, and I can’t even say why since we like them, quite a lot. I don’t think about them, don’t have the habit, postpone, and so it happens that years go by, many. For these meat rolls with raisins and almonds in tomato sauce, it took something like… um… twenty-five, twenty-six years (maybe more). 😅

We had eaten them at Marco’s. Such good rolls, so good that we all sang their praises, and I promised myself to try them right away. But then, alas, decades flew by in the blink of an eye! When I think back to that day, the scene is vividly in front of me, I see Marco’s house, the table, the friends, I can still hear the cheerfulness, still live it as if it happened a month ago, and instead, so many years have passed, I don’t know exactly how many but too many, so many that it doesn’t seem real.

At the time, my way of cooking was still very traditional (traditional from Romagna and Emilia), I knew little about the cuisine of other regions and nothing about Sicilian cuisine, I wasn’t interested in ethnic cuisine, I didn’t like sweet and sour (do you remember what I told you about oranges in salads?). So discovering that raisins could be used in a meat recipe, and with excellent results, was almost a revelation for me, a daring idea. Looking back, I consider it almost a starting point; perhaps I started that day to gradually change my way of cooking.

And today here I am, the meat rolls with raisins in the filling in tomato sauce are ready on the table, and they are my personal tribute to the memory of that beautiful day long ago. 😊

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I was tempted to save the recipe for when the Light and Tasty column came out with memory recipes, but today’s theme (precisely rolls) was too tempting to pass up! Since I don’t know how many years will pass before the next rolls see the light! 😄

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