Naples and its people have a strong link to traditional pastries: For centuries the sweet trio of babà, sfogliatella and pastiera has dominated undisputed. But in the city’s historic center, a woman dares to challenge the sacred pillars of pastry, offering instead a tarte au citron or éclair au chocolat that wouldn’t look out of place in Paris. The pastry shop’s name – Mon Sciù – clearly spells out its love of French and Neapolitan culinary cultures. Mon is French for “mine,” while sciù is the Neapolitan word for “choux pastry” (it’s also used to describe a person who is particularly kind).

It used to be the only favors I asked of Helena Bedwell were for phone numbers of particular officials I could not otherwise get from my usual sources. Helena, a journalist for 25 years, knows everyone in Tbilisi. Then last week, I called her for some help of a more domestic kind: I wanted to learn how to cook a Georgian holiday dish. She offered to show me pelamushi, a voluptuous tooth-smacking porridge. A couple of years ago, the Georgian journalist published her first cookbook, “Georgian Flavors from Helena,” a homey, straightforward collection of her take on classic Georgian recipes designed for “busy and on-the-go” people like her who may be abroad and want to recreate Georgian dishes with a limited supply of time and ingredients.

In Greece, Epiphany is celebrated on January 6 (some eastern Orthodox churches celebrate it on January 19). To say it’s significant is an understatement: For eastern Christians like the Greeks, the day commemorates the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan by John the Baptist, seen as his manifestation as the son of God. For western Christians, the celebration came to commemorate the visit of the Magi; as a result, the day is also called Three Kings’ Day, often shortened to Kings’ Day. Called Theofania (theos=god + faino=reveal) or commonly Ton Foton (Των Φώτων, which literally translates “Of the Lights”), the celebration revolves around the blessing of waters. The process begins on the day prior, January 5, which is called protagiasi or fotisi.

Some of my most powerful memories from 2020 are of the post-lockdown reunions with the owners of my favorite bodegas and grocery shops in Barcelona. After such a long period of confinement, it felt dizzying to move beyond the borders of my neighborhood and visit bars and restaurants again, which had newly reopened for takeaway. It was hard not to hug my friends – you know, we hug a lot in Spain. On one particularly ridiculous day in May, I remember sneaking a glass of vermut in a paper coffee cup at one of my local bodegas. The coffee cup was a disguise – any police patrolling the streets would think that I was just buying a takeaway coffee (permitted) and not having a drink inside a bar (forbidden).

Making chilaquiles always seemed a little out of my reach. I’m familiar with the dish’s humble beginnings, invented as a way of making use of day-old tortillas, but it still held some element of mystery for me: Under the practiced hands of locals, what seemed to be normal, everyday ingredients – fried tortillas, cooked salsa, raw onion, fresh cheese, double cream – transformed into a blend of flavors that felt impossible to recreate. This is a dish that I came to love after moving to Mexico City, where it quickly became my go-to when I sat down at a restaurant for breakfast. If I couldn’t find anyone to accompany me, I would often go out to breakfast alone just to eat chilaquiles.

When the first lockdown began in March 2020, one of the few things to disappear from supermarket shelves in Naples was yeast. Everyone was forced to stay home, where many got the idea to make pizza – baked, fried and stuffed. The result was that by mid-March, yeast was almost impossible to find. Fights broke out in grocery stores over packets of yeast. But I had my own secret reserves: Antonio ‘o fresellaro’s mother yeast. You see, on March 20 (at which point going out for food shopping was allowed), I escaped from home for a brief trip to buy Antonio Di Paolo’s freselle (twice-baked bread). While I was there, Antonio gifted me a piece of his family’s most precious treasure: their mother yeast.

For most of us around the globe, 2020 has been an unexpected and extremely challenging year. The world has never felt smaller. Here in Athens, we have been on a second strict lockdown for a month and a half now. My seven-year-old son is learning online, and I often feel like I’m juggling too many balls: coordinating and overseeing his schooling schedule, keeping the house as organized as I can considering that we spend almost all our time here, and trying to work at the same time. But the pandemic has had one positive effect, at least for me: I’ve found the time to experiment with recipes and spend quality time alone and focused (or at least semi-focused) in my kitchen. It has been keeping me sane, creative and positive. “My kitchen is my shrine and in it I shine!” is my motto for this weird year.

Homemade bread was a byproduct of the Covid-19 lockdown worldwide, as witnessed by the lack of flour on supermarket shelves and proudly displayed loaves on Instagram feeds. I understood the trend – bread gave people a sense of purpose, warmed homes with comforting scents and filled the void left by closed-down everything. Plus, the act of kneading gave the one-two punch of stress relief and tactile pleasure. Yet, I felt no need to knead. For I live in France, the land where boulangeries churn out 30 million baguettes a day. A place where bread is such an integral part of life that no meal is considered complete without it. Whatever I made at home wouldn’t match the loaves of someone who has devoted their life to the craft of bread making.

Müşterek’s Mezes on the Move Müşterek has been my favorite meyhane for quite some time, but I’ve been less than vocal about this in public. During its heyday, it could be tough to get a table in the cozy space even on a weekday, so I preferred to keep mum about this beloved spot on Beyoğlu’s Mis Sokak for fear of it becoming overhyped and overcrowded. Such concerns are now a remnant of what seems to be a distant past, as Müşterek has been closed for months due to licensing issues – a result of government-imposed pandemic precautions in Turkey that many have criticized as arbitrary.

The Chive Pocket from Delicious Jin I can use more green in my “feed,” in more senses of that word than one. The colors of the street foods, grilled foods, fried foods and other snack foods that I taste around the city tend toward the golden browns of just-baked pastry, the ruddy hues of slow-roasted meats and the deep browns of rich sauces. My website and social media accounts are often crowded with images from the same palette. And my daily diet, during hours-long forays on foot, is often undersupplied with greens. I don’t expect to find a street vendor’s handcart offering hand-tossed salads, so when I do sit down at, say, a Chinese restaurant, many times I’ll build my meal by looking first to the menu of vegetable dishes.

Switch Samosas (Or, Last Night a DJ Saved My Dinner) As lockdowns continue to ravage the restaurant industry, predictions in the news tell us we ain’t seen nothing yet. Uber Eats riders, unmistakable with their lime green cooler backpacks, have taken over the streets, blazing up the Avenida like road warriors in formation. Mom and pop can barely keep the lights of their tasca on much less pay the delivery shakedown. Hope is scarce for the independent, free-spirited food entrepreneur whose livelihood is built on serving people, directly. If you are as tired of this old tune as we are, prick up your ears to the story of Switch Samosas, a project of Marco Antão AKA DJ Switchdance, Lisbon’s premier DJ-cum-samosa-slinger, who is nurturing his community through the pandemic on his own terms with his mother’s samosas.

“Eat your greens,” they said. “Why not juice them?” Mexico asked. Since time immemorial, or at least for as long as I can remember, natural fruit and vegetable juices have been a thing in Mexico, long before juice bars became trendy in the rest of the world. The juguería (juice bar) is an essential part of the “stallscape” in every Mexican market. However, this tradition can trace its roots to Mexican households, where fresh juice and fruit-infused water have long been enjoyed during breakfast or lunch – and still are, although carbonated drinks are increasingly replacing them. Luckily, the juguerías continue to serve up dozens of juices with different flavors and purposes, from helping with a hangover effects to activating blood circulation and everything in between.

Editor’s note: Normally when December rolls around, we ask our correspondents to share their “Best Bites,” as a way to reflect on the year in eating. But 2020 was not a normal year. So at a time when the act of eating has changed for so many, our correspondents will write about their “Essential Bites,” the places, dishes, ingredients and other food-related items that were grounding and sustaining in this year of upheaval. Last March we loaded the car with our best cooking gear, bought enough provisions at Carrefour to fill a big red shopping cart, and headed to Garikula to ride out the pandemic in our village sanctuary. The seasonal cold winds ripped down the Tedzami Valley to shake winter off the trees; before unloading the car, we stoked the wood-burning stove to shake it out of our walls.

The presence of bread on the Greek Christmas table is rich with significance: It symbolizes hope for prosperity, an abundant harvest year and good health. The tradition of baking bread for a festive occasion, as well as its many symbolic meanings, can be traced back to ancient times, when many great Mediterranean civilizations associated the cycle of human life with the full life cycle of wheat. It was a belief that embedded deeply in Greek folk culture and has survived over the centuries, ultimately coming to occupy an important place in Christianity. Christopsomo (Christ’s Bread) is a type of traditional Christmas bread prepared all across Greece. The bread itself and the ceremonial nature of preparing it symbolize the prosperity of the household.

For Christmas, a Neapolitan wants to eat three things: fish, seafood and more fish. So important are the creatures of the sea for the holy evening that Christmas is also referred to as the festa dei sette pesci (“feast of the seven fishes”). And while all fish are welcome at the table, one is especially dear to every Neapolitan’s stomach: dried, aged Atlantic cod. It comes in two similar but distinct forms: baccalà, or salt cod, which, as the name suggests, is cod that has been heavily salted; and stoccafisso, known as “stockfish” in English, which is preserved by being dried in the sun and the wind. Before they are eaten, both are soaked in water to rehydrate and soften them.