It’s a sign of how denatured Steve’s Neapolitan heritage is that he believed a traditional family holiday dish was spelled “struvela.” It’s actually struffoli—something Steve didn’t figure out until recently. Steve has memories of picking at the honey-covered dough bits as they sat on an increasingly sugar-sticky paper doily for days, a concept Michelle finds bewildering as well as slightly disgusting. Nevertheless, acceding to Steve’s whim, she decided to help bring struffoli to Gourmandistan.

Steve’s mother was happy to give him her family struffoli recipe. But she couldn’t find the index card she’d written it on, and sheepishly admitted she actually hadn’t bothered to make it in years. Mom finally dug up a recipe she deemed familiar in Lillian Marshall’s 1971 Courier-Journal & Times Cookbook. This particular struffoli recipe is super-simple (as long as you’re comfortable with hot oil frying). Michelle mixed and kneaded the dough in about the time it took Steve to walk to the chicken yard and back, and we both rolled out the dough ropes quickly. A short time later we had a sticky pile of fried dough puffs, with a bland flavor contrasting their honey-sugar glaze—as Michelle called it, “croquembouche for poor Italians.”

Steve’s mother insisted we use multicolored sprinkles for our struffoli, to adhere to DeMarzo tradition. When dictating it to Steve, she did admit the C-J&T recipe actually called for pine nuts, leading Steve to do a bit of research and discover probably better struffoli recipes with pine nuts, citrus zest, hazelnuts and/or other goodness instead of crummy sprinkles. Next year, we may try a different kind of struffoli—but as Steve’s mother said, “at least someone will be keeping the tradition going.”