Hot cross bun at Amy's Bread

Dear Howard: Hot cross buns are an English pastry associated with Good Friday. Actually, some are like bread rolls, while others are more like muffins or even cupcakes in texture and taste. What they have in common is candied fruit inside, and a plus sign (+) of white powdered-sugar frosting on top. Additionally, many are flavored with cinnamon, making them a cousin of Cinnabon.

It sounds like a Twin Peaks episode: 100 years ago a one-armed chef, to please a toothless old royal family member, invented the tunde ke kebab. It seems the old codger had lost his teeth, and staged a contest to see who could come up with the tenderest lamb kebab, or at least one that could be most successfully gummed.

[See More Stories Of...: Pozole | Hash | Futomaki]

We're nearly at the end of 100 Dishes to Eat Now, our tasty countdown leading up to our Best of 2012 issue!

Many of us are familiar with the pork-and-hominy stew called pozole that's available as a weekend special at taquerias in East Harlem, Sunset Park, Hell's Kitchen, and Corona, among other places here and there in the city. Our pozole is generally a milky white, or on rare occasions when it can be found, a much spicier red color. Now an East Village restaurant offers a more obscure green version. And is it tasty!

[See More 100 Dishes: A Classic Rum Baba Done Right | Koong Chae Nam Pla at Chao Thai Too, Dish #4 | Fried Pork Chops at Margie's Red Rose, Dish #6]

Welcome to 100 Dishes to Eat Now, the tasty countdown leading up to our "Best of 2012" issue. Tune in every day (weekends, too!) for a new dish from the Fork in the Road team.

Say the word "hash," and the canned variety usually comes to mind. You know, the product that features potatoes and either roast beef or corned beef in an impossibly fine dice of stunning uniformity. Decanned and fried with an egg on top, it's a diner staple beloved of folks who crave salty foods.

[See More 100 Dishes: The King of Fried Chicken Sandwiches | In Flushing, Street Cart Food Moves Indoors | Chorizo Taco from B Bar, Dish #18]

[See More Featured: 10 Best Incredibly Cheap Eats in New York | 10 Best Ice Creams in NYC]

Futomaki is a type of sushi that looks like a regular maki roll blown up with a bicycle pump, but still retaining its perfect cylindrical configuration. Measuring from two to three inches in diameter, it enfolds a combination of ingredients rolled up inside rice and laver (the rather unlovely English word for the dried sheets of seaweed known as nori).

Tlaycoyo, from an Nahuatl Indian word, is a central Mexican street food consisting of an oblong slab of masa dough that has been stuffed with a layer of crushed beans and cooked on a comal - a flat or sometimes slightly concave griddle.

[See What Else is for Breakfast: Sullivan St Bakery's Delayed Chelsea Store | Buvette's Eggs Extraordinaire]

After high school in Dallas I went to college in Austin, so for the first couple of years I hitched rides between the two places several times a year. For UT students, there were several popular stopovers on the four-hour ride, including a little bakery in the town of West, Texas (about 10 miles north of Waco, the halfway point) that specialized in kolaches.

Salta is the national dish of Yemen, and one of the world's most unique culinary creations. Usually, it's consumed communally by family and friends sitting around the bubbling pot in a circle. The pot contains a well-cooked and finely textured vegetable stew flavored with lamb or chicken. But the most remarkable part is what's on top: a foamy cloud-like mass with a slippery texture.