Dumplings are easily my favorite food group. As a confirmed food nerd, I have a deep seated love for all delicious edibles, but, for some reason, these little doughy packets of wonder have always held a special place in my heart. Growing up, my family had a tradition of going out to Dim Sum in the far flung reaches of Los Angeles’ outskirts. One of my father’s friends was a certifiable expert on authentic Chinese food, and he always took us to these improbably baroque restaurants tucked away in shopping centers with names like The Great Mall of China, where we would feast on dishes ranging from the familiar to the downright strange.

It was on these monthly excursions that I first developed my love of dumplings. I gravitated to them at first because of the ease with which I could lift them with chopsticks. Most of the restaurants we went to didn’t have forks available, and it was hard for a novice five-year-old to manage slippery dishes like noodles, or corral the little bits of rice and vegetables that skittered maddeningly away across the slick china plate at my approach. Dumplings, on the other hand, were easy. You could just stab them with one chopstick and nibble happily!

While my chopsticking abilities grew over time, my love of dumplings remained undiminished. In college, I explored the best New York’s extensive chinatown could offer, often spending sundays in the park with friends watching old men perform Chinese opera and teenagers play brutally competitive handball, as we munched away on great cardboard containers of crispy fried pork and scallion dumplings slicked with Siracha sauce and vinegar. I also branched out into the wider world of dumplings, enthusiastically sampling Polish pirogis, Tibetan mandu, Japanese gyoza, and even sweet Czech zwetschkentnodel.

I’m hardly the first person to be so enthused about the prospect of dumplings. In fact, they are one of the oldest, and most internationally beloved, forms of food in the world. Aside from the tasty examples I mentioned in the last paragraph, dumplings in one form or another can be found in almost every inhabited corner of the world, in variety of diversely delicious forms ranging from Italian ravioli to Indian samosas.

According to the Oxford companion to food, the modern word for dumpling first emerged in England some time in the 1600s, a low German word meaning “little lump.” They had been a popular food in England since the rule of King John, who was so fond of the doughy treats that he famously mandated that every Sunday morning, all the men in his court, from the highest lord to the lowest stable boy, would breakfast on wine and dumplings.

Of course, dumplings themselves had been around for much longer than that! The first cookbook on record, a tome by a famous Roman cook called Apicius, contained a recipe for meat and celery dumplings. And they have been a popular food in China since around 150 A.D. when, according to culinary legend, the famous herbalist Zhang Zhoing Jing developed a method of getting his more reluctant patients to swallow their bitter herbs by wrapping them in dough, and cooking the packets in a deliciously savory broth.

Dumplings quickly became an extremely popular snack food, particularly among merchants and other travelers on the silk road, who found the little packets conveniently easy to store in pockets and munch on as they walked along. It was these early silk road travelers who brought knowledge of dumpling making techniques to the rest of the world, where the basic method of wrapping something yummy in dough was interpreted in a variety of ways suited to a number of diverse local culinary cultures.

I’m on the road right now, and I have to admit that writing this article has left me with a serious craving for the kind of dumpling deliciousness I’ll likely be unable to find in this small town in Utah. So when I get home, maybe I’ll host a dumpling party, and have friends over to wrap, fold, steam, and gobble down as many dumplings as our stomachs can handle. What kind of dumplings should I make? Leave your suggestions in the comments, please, and hey, if they turn out well, maybe I’ll even mail you some!

As someone who grew up in a household that celebrated any holiday that involved gifts and food, and went to a hippy school where I learned Kwanzaa songs alongside jinglebells, I always assumed that knowledge of Hanukkah was universal. But this weekend, when I found myself telling a tableful of friends about the Maccabees, I realized that a little bit of remedial education might be in order. After all, if you’re going to celebrate with a tableful of delicious Hanukkah food (which I highly recommend), you should know what you’re celebrating!

During the time of the Roman Empire, an armed conflict broke out between the government and the jews, who were a persecuted religious minority. Some of the Jewish people formed a militant group called the Maccabees, and resisted Roman forces. After much struggle, the Maccabees recaptured the major temple in the center of Jerusalem, only to find that the romans had filled it with statues of their gods, and used the alter for animal sacrifices. To purify the temple, Jewish law required that they burn ritual oil in the temple’s menorah (a kind of a candle holder) for eight days and nights. Although they only had enough oil for one night, the lamp burned continuously throughout the eight days, until the temple was purified.

During Hanukkah, jews celebrate the miracle of the menorah by lighting one candle a night over the course of eight nights in an eight pronged candelabra, and eating fried foods. And really, what better way to celebrate an oil lamp miracle is there? Eastern european ashkenazi jews often eat sufganiyot, little doughnuts stuffed with jelly, or other sweet fillings. Arabic sephardic jews may indulge in bricks a l’oeuf, savory puff pastry pockets, or burmuelos, a type of honeyed fritter. And then, of course, there is the Hanukkah treat to rule them all; the universally beloved latke.

Everyone will tell you that their bubbe (a jewish term of endearment for grandmothers) makes the world’s best latkes. But my bubbe, a lovely little woman named Betty, whose warmth and kindness was only matched by the deliciousness of her latkes, really did! She lived in a little apartment tucked away behind a glassed in courtyard, and when we went to her house for out annual Hanukkah celebration as children, I could swear I smelled the frying latkes from all the way down the hallway. So one year, when she invited me to come over early and help cook, I was so excited I could barely wait for Hanukkah to arrive.

If you think I’m going to share the specifics of Betty’s famed latke recipe with you guys, a crowd of internet strangers, than you are sadly mistaken.I have the distinct feeling that she wouldn’t be happy with me, and as nice as it would be to see Betty again, inviting a haunting by a vengeful grandmotherly ghost with access to hot oil isn’t exactly high on my holiday to do list! So instead, here’s a basic recipe for you to improvise with. Feel free to add and substitute to your heart’s desire; after all, that’s how classic latke recipes are born.

1. Grate a whole mess of potatoes and onions in a bowl. My usual ratio is two potatoes for every onion, but it depends on the relative sizes of your potatoes and onions. If you have a food processor with a grater attachment, feel free to get fancy and use it for shredding, you lucky duck!

2. Take the messy pile of grated veggies, sprinkle with salt, and leave it to drain in a colander, squishing it down periodically to get rid of excess moisture.

3. Once the potatoes have drained, rinse them off, squeezing out the moisture with your hands one last time, and mix in ¼ cup of flour, matzo meal, or bread crumbs, and one egg for every two potatoes you used. Stir the mixture well with a wooden spoon until everything is combined.

4. Heat any oil with a high smoke point, such as vegetable, peanut, or sunflower seed oil, in a heavy bottom frying pan. When the oil is hot, drop in a spoonful of the potato mixture, flattening it with the back of your spoon like a regular pancake, and flipping it after about a minute or so. Transfer finished latkes to a paper towel covered plate to drain.

This might seem like a lot of work, but keep in mind that you can fry the latkes well in advance and keep them warm in a heated oven to no ill effect until your guests arrive. In fact, this treatment can even make them a little crispier! Once you’re ready to serve them, I highly recommend pairing your latkes with the traditional accompaniments of sour cream and homemade applesauce. But be warned, latkes can be addictive, and I promise you’ll be surprised at how fast your piled high plate dwindles to nothing. It’s a good thing for our arteries that hanukkah only comes once (ok, eight times) a year!

When I think of McDonalds, like most Westerners, I have a very specific image in mind. In the United States, McDonald’s is the restaurant of the huddled masses, a place people go when they are too tired, lazy, or poor to cook, or simply feeling nostalgic for that particular kind of deliciously greasy trashiness. You don’t go to McDonalds because you want to, you go because you have to, either because its the cheapest thing around, or because you have a shameful but compelling craving for a Mcsomething-or-other. And it’s addictive stuff, I have vegan friends who sneak off once or twice a year for their beloved sausage McMuffin; foodie friends who will shamefully admit to being excited about the return of the McRib.

But America isn’t the only country to have a McObsession. McDonalds has been one of the most profitable and fastest growing restaurant chains in history, thanks in large part to their highly successful global strategies. While preserving iconic aspects like the golden arches and restaurant design, McDonalds restaurants around the world vary significantly, each with highly researched individual menus, employee practices, and handling processes to accommodate the desires of various international markets.

McDonalds menus around the world are highly adaptable and based on local taste preferences and culinary traditions. In India, where Hindus make up nearly eighty percent of the population, beef is definitely off the menu. Instead, Indian McDonalds customers can sample McVersions of traditional staples like tandori chicken and a vegetarian aloo gobi burger made with potatoes. The company serves neither beef (bye bye big mac), nor pork (sayonara mcrib), to avoid offending both their Muslim and Hindu customers.

Some of the menu differences are purely gastronomic. In Germany, where the brews make the meal, McDonalds not only serves up McVersions of staples like sausages and shnitzle, but offers customers the chance to accompany their meal with a cold pint or two. And Asian countries like Japan and Hong Kong are home to locally inspired specialties like fried shrimp nuggets, green tea milkshakes, and hamburgers with rice cakes standing in for the more traditional bun. You can even opt for noodle soup topped with a sausage and egg for breakfast!

Aside from their gastronomic adaptations, McDonalds makes sure that their restaurants conform to the cultural quirks of the various countries they operate in, from the most important cultural beliefs, to the tiniest quirks of accepted behaviors. For example, Israel is home to a handful of all kosher McDonalds, where there’s nary a cheeseburger in sight. They have opened a handful of all-vegetarian outlets in majority Buddhist and Hindu countries catering to their more religiously observant customers. And in some middle eastern countries, there are separate seating areas for unmarried men and women. Some of the more amusing minor cultural changes include the statues of Ronald McDonald in Thailand locations, which pose in a traditional Thai welcoming gesture, hands in a prayer position, French locations offering big macs on baguettes, and even a branch in a Swedish town with a “ski-through” window.

In the upcoming weeks, we will be taking a closer look at McDonalds in a variety of countries around the world, starting with the way McDonalds has become a signifier of sophistication and westernized tastes among China’s upper and middle classes.

Are there other countries you’d like us to cover? Other chains that deserve a closer look? Let us know in the comments section!