Photo: jlastras/Flickr

A British-American colleague here at WBUR has long reminded me of the May Day Morris Dancing traditions that go on each year in the wee hours of May 1st on the Charles River in Cambridge. “You should go!” she always says. Well, I took a pass AGAIN this year (my excuses: I was out of town, and that pre-6 AM wake-up still sounds WAY too early), but this got me thinking about food traditions on May Day. Were there any to speak of?
The quick answer is, ‘hard to find.’ Unless you yourself celebrate the day and have your own traditions you honor. The ancient roots of May Day are Roman, as it turns out, and this again got me thinking since I had a dinner to turn out. Can’t we all be a little Roman on May Day? When I got home from New York, I needed to make dinner pronto. So I pulled out a recipe for pasta alla carbonara that another colleague at WBUR had recommended to me and tried it out on my parents. The catch here is that this recipe for carbonara called for vermouth. That’s right. Vermouth! During my grad school days in Rome NEVER did I see scallions scattered atop that iconic Roman primoor hear my friends talking about the wine you add in for flavor. But this interpretation called for a sprinkling of green onions for the finish and the whole ensemble, traditional egg yolks and all, was GOOD. Savory, satisfying, not a bit heavy or OTT. My dyed-in-the-wool Irish husband really liked it, too. Maybe that was his Beltane roots kicking in for the occasion?

Here’s the RECIPE I followed for pasta alla carbonara with vermouth. Plus, a word from the too-hasty: make sure you save some of the pasta water! I had drained it away before remembering (%$!). We all agreed the carbonara was a bit drier than it should have been, but I kid you not there wasn’t a scrap left over.
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Watch this video on May Day Morris Dancing festivities in Cambridge, MA.
Here’s  a link for the history of Morris Dancing.
This recipe for carbonara calls for garlic scapes (never knew they had a name!) instead of scallions.