Every Tuesday and Friday, Maybachufer Strasse, a pretty, tree-lined street running alongside the Landwehrkanal (Landwehr Canal) in Berlin’s Neukölln neighborhood, comes alive with the hustle and bustle of the city’s biggest Turkish market, the Türkenmarkt.

For Carnival in Rio, new blocos, or free street parties, are born every year when creative friends put their heads together to dream up a theme and a combination of musicians that will tempt partygoers for a magical few hours. New blocos publicize and build momentum via open “rehearsals” in the weeks leading up to Carnival that are parties in and of themselves. If these rehearsals bombar (explode with excellence), word spreads fast, and the bloco comes roaring to life during Carnival and for years to come.

As the moon starts to wane each January, people throughout China frantically snatch up train and bus tickets, eager to start the return journey to their hometown to celebrate the Lunar New Year (春节, chūnjié) with their family. This year, revelers will make an estimated 3.64 billion passenger trips during the festive season, up 200 million from the previous year. One of the major draws for migrant workers heading home is the chance to eat traditional, home-cooked meals.

Editor’s note: We regret to report that Can Manel has closed. We don’t mind winter in Catalonia because it means the return of calçots, our beloved spring onions, and calçotadas, the wonderful celebrations that bring people together to eat them. While tradition usually calls for calçot eating to take place in the countryside, there are plenty of places to enjoy them in Barcelona as well. Since 2012, when Can Manel was reopened by the new owners Joel Balagué and Ana Roig, this homey eatery near the Sants train station has become a point of reference for the urban calçotada.

If stepping foot in Brazil doesn’t make your taste buds start tingling in anticipation of kibes (bulgur wheat croquettes), esfihas (thin meat and cheese pastries), tangy molho arabe and hummus, it’s because you haven’t studied up properly on the rich history of Arab migration to Brazil – and the supremely tasty gastronomical mark it’s left on this country’s snack food culture.

Dunlop is a cook and food writer specializing in Chinese cuisine. She is the author of four books, including, most recently, Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking. She has won many awards for her work, including four James Beard awards, an IACP award, four awards from the British Guild of Food Writers and an award from the Hunan government. Her writing has been published in the Financial Times, The New Yorker, The Observer and The New York Times, and she is also a frequent pundit on Chinese food on BBC radio and television, as well as many other media outlets.

Until a few years ago, breakfast eateries were not very common in Rio. Cariocas would have breakfast at home or at a bakery, while tourists had to make do with the always-boring "Continental breakfast" offered at hotels. But thankfully, everything has changed.

The story begins around 1975, when the bar La Barretina – then a hot spot, now long gone – began serving leche de pantera (“Panther Milk”). This milk-and-liquor concoction, with roots that can be traced to the Spanish Foreign Legion, was so strong that the hordes of students who flocked to this port-area alley along Barcelona’s Carrer de la Mercè would literally spill their guts nearly every night across the wide flagstones that separated the bar from its neighbors.

Shouning Lu is known as Crawfish Street, with street food vendors often stewing, grilling and frying up the same seafood dishes up and down the one-block stretch. But there’s one land-lubbing vendor that has carved out a niche for itself: Ǎizi Xiànbǐng (矮子馅饼), or Dwarf’s Pastries.

As we mentioned in our piece about Rosca de Reyes, February 2 is an important date in the Mexican calendar - for Candlemas and, relatedly, for tamales. True, tamales are one of the most popular foods in Mexico City, and we can find all kinds of reasons for eating them any day of the week. But this day commemorates a ritual visit Mary made to the temple in Jerusalem with the baby Jesus. In the Catholic Church and Orthodox traditions, February 2 is the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, and at one time, the candles used in services in church throughout the year would be blessed that day, hence the name Candlemas or Candelaria. Native Mexicans would celebrate the planting this time of year with a big feast that would include tamales, and the indigenous and Christian traditions became linked.

Slippery cellophane noodles, crunchy sprouts, wobbly jelly, starchy cake, sweet porridge, crispy crêpe, sour fermented drink, a lamb-oil splattered mash: these are just a few of the many forms that the humble, versatile mung bean can take.

If there is one single food family that shows off the breadth and extent of the collective Greek culinary imagination, it has to be the humble legume. Together with wheat, beans of all kinds, along with lentils, chickpeas and split peas, form the very foundation of the Greek diet and have done so since Neolithic times.

Everyone knows that Carnival takes place in February. But in Rio, the party starts long before then. As early as November, sometimes even the end of October, the public can take part in ensaios, or rehearsals, that Carnival groups and organizations put on all over town.

There’s something limitless about tacos in Mexico. All you need for a good taco is a soft corn tortilla – handmade are a plus – and a filling, which can take the form of meats such as al pastor, carnitas, mixiote, fish, vegetables and, lesser-known outside of Mexico, guisados.

Although coffee culture is booming in China, the Middle Kingdom is still the world’s biggest consumer and producer of tea leaves. The drink is so important that one Chinese proverb claims, “It is better to be deprived of food for three days, than of tea for one,” and tea is included on the list of the seven necessities of Chinese life (along with firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce and vinegar). Chinese joke that you can study tea for your entire life and still not learn the names of all the different kinds. But for tea newbies, there are four basic types of the brew to help slake your thirst for knowledge.