Rosa di Parma

One of the interesting things about my mother is that she likes to make efforts. She likes to try new and difficult things, and she usually carries them off. I think I am almost used to it... she will make a significant change to something in the house just before a holiday, because the holiday adds both a deadline and a motivation.

This time, for Christmas, she got this huge, heavy, framed mirror for the living room that we had to hang two days ago. It always scares me, hanging heavy stuff on the wall. I'm always waiting for it to come crashing down. (So far it's still hanging.)

And in the kitchen!

She decided to try a dish she'd never made before, called Rosa di Parma. It sounds simple to describe. Well, here's the recipe: you take a beef tenderloin, spread it out, dry it off, and put a single layer of prosciutto over it, sliced thin. They another layer of shaved bits of parmesan cheese. Just one layer.

Then you roll it up, tie it, and cook it on the stove top in a bath of Lambrusco and Marsala.

If you need more details, you can look up the recipe online, but that's enough to actually do it.

It was amazing!

It was fun helping her, too. I was surprised to see how nervous she was. She was actually uncertain about how it was going to go!

Also, it's only the second time in my life that I've eaten tenderloin. The first was a couple of weeks ago. It was at a rather elegant Christmas party, a sit-down affair, and one of the dinner choices was tenderloin.

"It's so tender!" I exclaimed.

"It is tenderloin," my date pointed out.

One of those duh! moments, but I didn't care.

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