Fried dough + chestnut honey

Photo, Dan Ryan

We had a small bit of leftover pizza dough last weekend and decided to fry it up. Mmmm... brought me right back to my childhood. My mom (Irish, English, Scottish, and Dutch) would fry small spheres and then coat them in cinnamon sugar. She just called them plain old fried dough, though my Italian Nonna would have called the fried balls of dough zeppole. In New Mexico they call them sopapillas, which are amazing slathered in a honey butter. Whatever you call them, zeppole, sopaipillas or just fried dough, they're simply delicious. Here's a grown up version—more a flat disc than a sphere—drizzled with a gorgeous Italian chestnut honey. Bellissimo!