This month, my parents and their friends in central Italy are busy singing folk songs with fellow May singers called maggerini. Traditionally, workers would gather on 1 May, Labour Day, and sing at farms in the locality in exchange for farm produce: salami, cheese, vegetables, eggs, ricotta, poultry, nuts, dried fruits – a bounty by anyone’s standards. In the postwar period, it became linked with the Partisans and resistance to Fascism. To this day, the maggerini rewrite verses to update popular songs with current issues – you can imagine what the subjects are this year.
Today, a week later, is La Ribotta, when the singers gather and eat what they were given the week before. It is a spectacular feast and the recipes below are an homage to that celebration. When I went, it was a bit like living in an Asterix comic. I think the Abruzzese dish, Le Virtù, demonstrates the Italian reverence for seasonal produce – each vegetable given the spotlight in a careful cooking. We will take the trouble and enjoy celebrating simple things this season.
