Hi, it's Mark Bitman, and welcome to Food. Let me be the last to wish you a happy new year.

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at bitman project.com do subscribe to that too but check out the site we're very

proud of it it's beautiful it's got an ever-growing recipe

database that we're adding to every single day with a bunch of cool features including

a great search engine and the ability to cook from a recipe without your screen going blank, putting it into a kind of cook mode, and a bunch of other great features.

It's

news letter has a gorgeous interesting wonderful photo essay about

Agru Ecology in Kenya and on the other side of the spectrum a piece about how to add Crunch to Brownies without nuts.

Very interesting piece by our friend Holly Haynes. Okay, back in a second. We'll get back to that conversation in a minute, but first I want to talk about something that

lots of people ask me about when it comes to global cuisines.

There is something magical about eating a cuisine in the place where it originated.

One of the reasons for that is that the dishes that define a cuisine are built around the produce that's native to a place.

It's why the feta and tomato and a Greek salad tastes so perfect in Athens,

or the artichokes in olive oil in Rome are to die for.

They have a certain sweetness and tang that you can get close to,

but not easily replicate.

...