I rarely cook meat, you know that. But the case of rolls is, let’s say, emblematic. 🤭 As I mentioned in the recipe for pork loin rolls, rolls rarely appear on my table, and I can’t even say why since we like them, a lot. I don’t think about them, I’m not in the habit, I procrastinate, and so years pass, many years. For these meat rolls with sauce stuffed with raisins and almonds, 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 had promised myself to try them right away. But then, oh dear!, the decades passed me by in a flash! When I think back to that day, the scene is vividly in front of me, I see Marco’s house, the table full of friends, the laughter still rings in my ears, I live it as if it happened a month ago, and yet so many years have passed, I don’t know exactly how many but too many, so many that it doesn’t seem real.

Back then my way of cooking was still very traditional (traditional Romagna and Emilia), I knew little of the cuisine from other regions and nothing of Sicilian cuisine, I wasn’t interested in ethnic cooking, 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. In hindsight, I consider it almost a starting point, perhaps it was on that day that I gradually began to change my way of cooking.

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

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The idea to save the recipe for when the Light and Tasty column came out with memory recipes had crossed my mind, but today’s theme (just the rolls) was an opportunity too good to pass up! Since I don’t even know how many years will pass before the next rolls see the light of day! 😄

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