Darra Goldstein introduced a generation of cooks and readers to the cuisine and culture of Georgia with her seminal work, “The Georgian Feast.” Originally published in 1993, the book was awarded the IACP Julia Child Award for Cookbook of the Year. A revised and expanded 25th anniversary edition, which features new photography, recipes, and an essay from celebrated wine writer Alice Feiring, was published in October 2018. We spoke with Darra, the founding editor of “Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture” and the author of five award-winning cookbooks, about this new edition.

As the calendar year turns over, we’ve grown accustomed to the barrage of lists telling us where to travel during the next 12 months. Oftentimes these places are a country or even a whole region – you could spend an entire year exploring just one of the locations listed and still barely make a dent. We like to travel on a smaller scale. Forget countries and cities, for us the neighborhood is the ideal unit of exploration. Celebrating neighborhood life and businesses is, of course, essential to what we do as Culinary Backstreets. Since our founding in 2012, we’ve been dedicated to publishing the stories of unsung local culinary heroes and visiting them on our food walks, particularly in neighborhoods that are off the beaten path.

In a nation with so many baking and confectionary traditions, it’s surprising that one of the most popular cakes – the bolo-rei – was imported from another country (a sweet tooth does not discriminate, apparently). Translated as “king cake,” the bolo-rei was brought to Portugal from Toulouse, France, by one of the oldest bakeries in Lisbon, Confeitaria Nacional. Over the years, the bolo-rei has become a staple during the festive season: ubiquitous on the table before, during and after Christmas and New Year, and certainly a must for Dia de Reis (Epiphany) on January 6, when it’s baked in its fanciest form with a nougat crown (made of caramel and almonds) and fios de ovos (“egg threads,” or eggs drawn into thin strands and boiled in sugar syrup).

Athens supermarkets devote many shelves to Greek chocolate bars, and there is no shortage of shops in the city that produce their own chocolates with different fillings as well as truffles, along with other types of sweets. But the past year has seen a chocolate renaissance of sorts: two shops opened which are dedicated exclusively to chocolate, joining a third, The Dark Side of Chocolate, an old-timer from 2011. What’s fascinating is that the owners are all young people in love with this magical, demanding substance, yet their creations could not be more different.

The Portuguese have a sweet tooth, and one of their favorite ways to satisfy it is with so-called convent sweets, indulgent desserts that were created in Catholic convents and monasteries using egg yolks, sugar and other rich ingredients. We sample some of these sweets on our “Lisbon Awakens: A Culinary Crossroads, Reborn” walk.

Initially, it was books that led Fernando Rodriguez Delgado to his interest in cacao. Today Rodriguez runs Chocolate Macondo, a café that specializes in ancient preparations of cacao, but prior to that he was a bookseller, fanatical about reading and fascinated by the history of Mexico. The day that he came across the Florentine Codex, a 16th-century manuscript documenting Mesoamerican culture, was an important one: it would eventually spark his countrywide search to discover the traditions of cacao and seek out ingredients, the names of which he only knew in Nahuatl. Rodriguez didn’t speak this native language of Mexico, so trying to work out the recipes for cacao drinks he found in the codex was no easy task.

‘Tis the season of the Japanese New Year’s trinity: osechi, oseibo and nengajo. Like newsy Christmas cards, the nengajo is a recap of family or personal news mailed in postcards during the weeks preceding the end of the year and efficiently delivered all over Japan promptly on January 1. The winter gift-giving season is in full swing, with companies and individuals sending oseibo gifts as thank-you expressions for kindnesses over the year. Most gifts are food or household items like cooking oil or soap. The best of the traditions is osechi ryori, traditional New Year’s cuisine. Osechi is not something one can find in a restaurant because it’s eaten only one time a year, at home or when visiting others at home.

The thought of eating unagi (freshwater eel) can be off-putting, yet the super-fragrant, umami-tasting, velvety-textured delicacy is one of Japan’s prized foods. In Tokyo the eels are split from the stomach side for cleaning and then steamed before being grilled over charcoal and lavished with a finishing sauce, gleaming and sequestered in a covered lacquer box or ceramic bowl.

Located between the Atlantic Ocean and the Bay of Biscay, in the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula, Galicia is a large, wild cape that almost looks like a gigantic hand stretching out into the sea, hemmed in by the beautiful estuaries of the Rías Baixas to the south and the Rías Altas to the north. Given this location, the region has long been renowned as a fishing and agriculture center (although it’s best known internationally as the site of the Camino de Santiago, or the Way of Saint James, an ancient pilgrimage route). Over the past few centuries, however, Galicia has been also been characterized by the migration of a good portion of its population to more prosperous cities and countries.

Whenever I hear Annie Lennox singing, “Sweet dreams are made of this, who am I to disagree,” I like to think she’s looking at a bowl of pumpkin doughnuts. I’m sure she never heard of sonhos, but let me explain. Traditionally, the Portuguese consume huge amounts of sugar and cakes at Christmas time, from the Bolo-Rei (a circular cake with nuts and candid fruit) to broas (small cakes, sweet and moist usually baked with sweet potato or corn flour), arroz doce (rice pudding), azevias (a fried pastry with a chickpea or sweet potato filling) and lampreias de ovos (an odd-looking lamprey fish made of egg yolks and sugar). But during this sugar overdose between Christmas and the New Year, the deep fried sonhos (literally “dreams” in Portuguese) are my favorite.

When I think of Christmas and the festive season, I’m immediately transported back to my childhood. Christmas to a child is something magical – the massive tree lit up and surrounded by gifts, stockings hung on the fireplace, a warm home filled with loving faces. And, of course, food always plays an important role in my memories of the holidays. Even though I don’t come from a very traditional family, certain customs – particularly those related to food – were devotedly repeated every single year with no second thought. Every year during the Christmas season, I realize how much I miss these rituals.

There’s a famous Italian saying that goes, “Christmas with yours, Easter with whomever you want.” In Naples, this piece of advice has practically become law, meaning that the Christmas holidays are spent with family – no ifs, ands or buts about it. So on December 25, Neapolitans can be found at home, surrounded by relatives (which is not always pure holiday joy) and enjoying together the gastronomic delights of Neapolitan Christmas fare. Of course, there is constant debate over what should go on the holiday table. There are certain dishes that have long been linked to the Christian calendar in Italy.

There was no wind and we were in the middle of the Black Sea on a bright summer day, puttering across the deep blue expanse in a chaika, a small wooden Cossack war ship that its Ukrainian sail-ors had equipped with a diesel motor. We were two days out from Yalta, and our captain, Myron, was looking eastward towards our destination of Batumi, his blue eyes glazed in a dreamy state of longing. “Ah, Georgia. Satsivi,” he sighed. “Satsivi,” he repeated sensually to Roman, the first mate, as if it were the name of a beckoning siren. “I cannot wait.” I was impressed he didn’t sob for khinkali and khachapuri like everyone else. But still, I had to quickly snuff out his reverie.

The largest of New York’s five boroughs, Queens is the home of over two million people, half of them born outside the United States, speaking more than 150 different languages. It’s also home to countless immigrant stories of the most classic kind: a newcomer arrives and sets up shop – or, more frequently, cart – selling the food of his or her homeland as the first step towards making it in America. As a result, for the culinary explorer, Queens is truly the promised land. With so much available in this land of plenty, it can be difficult to choose favorites. But our Queens correspondents were up to the task. Here they are reminiscing about their best bites of 2018.

After being named Best European Destination in 2017 and earning a few other tourist distinctions, there’s no doubt about it: Porto is trendy. But what’s trendy is also in Porto, and those who live here see new restaurants pop up every week. We try them all – places both bold and familiar – because we have a good appetite, but we put our trust in those spots where we get the warmest reception. And trust is something we take very seriously in Porto. Homey meals at A Cozinha do Manel Open now for three decades, A Cozinha do Manel is far from the touristy downtown and serves up good old comfort food, the type of fare that leaves us serenely satisfied.