There’s a lot to love about low-intervention wines. Their freshness, texture, and occasional funk can make natty bottles especially food-friendly, often revealing new sides of familiar flavors. When the SAVEUR team traveled to Madison for the Wisconsin Art of Cheese Festival, I asked Square Wine Co. owner Andrea Hillsey to share her favorite pairings using her home state’s cheeses. From savory gouda to lush brie and a ­singular blue-veined cheddar, these combinations show how thoughtful wines and carefully crafted cheeses can bring out the best in one another. 

Pét-Nat + Bloomy Triple Crème

NV La Staffa Mai Sentito! Pét-Nat, Marche, Italy + Schroeder Käse Triple Crème Brie, Rewey, Wisconsin

Hillsey gravitates toward bright, gently fizzy farmhouse bottles when pairing with Schroeder Käse’s silky, soft-ripened wheel. This pét-nat (or “pétillant naturel”) wine’s faint yeastiness echoes the triple crème’s mushroomy rind, while its mellow bubbles and acidity cut right through the richness, priming your palate for the next indulgent bite.

Old-School Red + Hard, Aged Cheese

2014 R. López de Heredia Viña Bosconia Reserva, Rioja, Spain + Roth Cheese Canela, Monroe, Wisconsin

“There are wines you’d never guess are natural,” Hillsey says of low-­intervention, traditional producers like this one in north-central Spain. The aged Rioja’s earthiness and soft tannins bring out the umami depth of Roth Cheese’s Canela—Wisconsin’s cow’s milk riff on Spanish Manchego. The pairing is both harmonious and complex.

Chillable Red + Earthy Blue

2024 Licorne Méchante “Le Cri du Loup,” Mendocino, California + Roelli Cheese Haus Red Rock, Shullsburg, Wisconsin

Hillsey likes a juicy, easy-drinking red (or as the French say, “glou glou”) with this subtle Roelli Cheese Haus blue-laced cheddar. Carbonic maceration—a technique popularized in Beaujolais, where grapes are left to ferment inside their skins before being pressed—creates a wine with savory depth and low tannins, helping it stand up to the elegant Wisconsin original without overpowering it.

Classic Dry White + Alpine Styles

2021 Valentin Zusslin Les Chapelles Riesling, Alsace, France + Alpinage Cheese Classic Raclette, Oak Creek, Wisconsin + Uplands Cheese Pleasant Ridge Reserve, Dodgeville, Wisconsin

With firm, mountain-style cheeses, Hillsey suggests a dry, structured white with enough weight to match their savory depth. A mineral-driven Alsatian riesling—with clean acidity and citrus and stone fruit on the nose—is an exceptional match to Upland’s Pleasant Ridge Reserve’s caramel and hazelnut notes and Alpinage Cheese Classic Raclette’s buttery allium character.

Orange Wine + Nutty, Aged Gouda

2021 American Wine Project Antipodes Frontenac Gris, Fillmore County, Minnesota + Hill Valley Dairy Luna, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Natural skin-contact (aka amber) wines are among Hillsey’s most cheese-friendly picks, thanks to their delicate yet structured tannins. Erin Rasmussen’s Antipodes—made in Wisconsin using cold-hardy hybrid grapes—lends a distinctive grip and freshness that complement award-winning Hill Valley Dairy Luna’s nutty crunch, enhancing its roasted walnut notes and caramelized sweetness.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Pairing Cheeses With Natural Wines appeared first on Saveur.

This piece originally appeared in SAVEUR’s Spring/Summer 2026 issue. See more stories from Issue 206.

Cookbooks get written for all kinds of ­reasons. A home cook may want to document their favorite family dishes, or a chef might long to share their professional knowledge with the world. Increasingly, celebrities get cookbook deals regardless of their expertise in the kitchen. But time and again, the most impactful examples are the books whose authors fought to make them possible.

These fights often concern cuisines that rarely see the spotlight. Many cookbook publishers insist such topics don’t sell, and while celebrity chefs and the diet du jour still dominate bestseller lists, this past season ushered in a wave of new titles immersed in the cuisines of Somalia, Sudan, Cambodia, Pakistan, and El Salvador, to name a few.

Some of these titles have been written by first-­generation ­immigrants. Several are the first-ever cookbooks to be published in English about their respective cuisines, or are among the few known to exist. All include painstakingly recreated recipes. More than just cookbooks, these projects are important works of cultural preservation.

“I have a responsibility to share my culture and this ­cuisine—and a real sense of not wanting this knowledge to be lost,” says Ifrah F. Ahmed, author of Soomaaliya. Ahmed was born in Mogadishu and came to the United States as a refugee in 1996. Her book—only the third to be published on Somali cuisine since 1978—provides a detailed overview of her home country’s history, pays homage to the chefs and writers who came before her, and intersperses thoroughly researched essays about the Somali diaspora.

In My Cambodia, San Francisco-based chef Nite Yun recalls how hard it was to find Khmer cooking resources when she first took to the kitchen. Her book weaves together her own personal, often painful memories of assimilating to life in California with unapologetic renditions of the dishes that brought her closer to her family. She refuses to simplify Cambodian cuisine for American palates. Explaining the importance of kroeung (lemongrass paste) and prahok (fermented fish paste): “If you don’t have [them] when a recipe calls for it,” she writes, “I highly suggest cooking another dish.”

These projects often cross the line from cookbook to ­ethnography, buoyed by shoe-leather reporting overseas. “After a couple of years of looking for—and cooking from—recipes online, I began to hit a wall,” writes Maryam Jillani in Pakistan. “I kept finding the same Pakistani recipes over and over again…There was little to no coverage of the dozens of regional culinary traditions I had encountered during my travels.” So Jillani took matters into her own hands, exploring her home country to learn from the chefs and home cooks who are credited throughout.

Karla Tatiana Vasquez employed a similar ­community-​driven approach in her 2024 cookbook SalviSoul, which doubles as a narrative history featuring candid interviews with 25 Salvadoran women who contributed their own recipes to the project. And Omer Al Tijani, in his groundbreaking book The Sudanese Kitchen (the first Sudanese cookbook printed in English), relied on dozens of local guides, extended family members, and on-the-ground fixers during his decade-long quest to document the nation’s foodways. Part of his motivation, he writes, was to shift the widespread (and reductive) narrative of Sudan as a “troubled” nation. Instead, he honors his home country’s multicultural culinary influences, which he compellingly argues “provide ­substantial ­contributions to the art of global gastronomy.”

Celebrity and diet cookbooks aren’t going away. But the emergence of these overdue ethnographies speaks to a growing demand from readers for books that dig deep, uncovering stories that rarely get told. The fights to publish them are well worth it.

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Celebrated chef Martin Yan, best known for his decades-long run hosting the television show Yan Can Cook, has spent his career introducing traditional Chinese cuisine to viewers around the world. His recipe for cong you bing turns out perfectly browned pancakes threaded with bits of green onion every time. “The basic recipe for a simple scallion pancake—served with soy milk or rice porridge for breakfast—is just a guide,” Yan says. “Some like it firmer, some fluffier. I add chile flakes for color, crunch, and a kick. What’s a classic, after all? The pancake is a canvas, add anything you like.” 

Featured in “101 Classic Recipes” in the October 2012 issue and “Our Best Recipes of All Time” in the Winter 2019 issue.

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During Japan’s Kamakura period (1185–1333), miso soups like this one, served with rice and pickled vegetables, were everyday fare. You can use shiro (white) or aka (red) miso in this recipe; once the miso is added, be sure to not boil the soup as this will diminish the delicate aroma and flavor of the fermented bean paste.

Featured in the May/June 1998 issue.

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There’s no better time to make use of maple syrup than in late winter and early spring, when the trees are tapped and the sap is boiled and bottled throughout the Northeast and Canada. We love the woody sweetness it adds to crêpes, bread pudding, and pie, but maple syrup isn’t just for desserts—it also pairs well with roasted meats and vegetables (especially those that are orange). Here are our best recipes starring the liquid gold.

Maple-Marinated Mustard Seeds

Montreal-based chef Laurent Dagenais likes to call this punchy, savory-sweet condiment “mustard caviar.” Use it to up the luxe factor on your next cheese plate or charcuterie board. Get the recipe >

Maple Parsnip Soup

Maple syrup brings out the natural sweetness of parsnips in this silky soup topped with crunchy, homemade garlic-thyme croutons. Get the recipe >

Maple Pork Shank With Buttered Cabbage

Transform a pork shank into a flavorful, company-worthy centerpiece by braising it with maple syrup and serving it on a bed of bacon-studded greens. Get the recipe >

Spicy Maple Roasted Chicken With Sweet Potato Oven Fries

Maple syrup sweetens the spice paste—fragrant with cumin, coriander, fennel, ginger, turmeric, and cinnamon—used to marinate a whole bird in this hearty supper from British Indian chef Romy Gill. Get the recipe >

New England-Style Baked Beans

Maple syrup adds sweetness and depth to these beans slow-cooked with smoky bacon or salt pork. Serve with plenty of brown bread to mop up all that luscious sauce. Get the recipe >

Molly O’Neill’s LongHouse Granola

The recipe for this life-changing granola comes from the late chef and food writer Molly O’Neill. It’s chock-full of oats, nuts, seeds, coconut, and raisins and is sweetened with a combo of maple syrup and honey. Get the recipe > 

Canadian Butter Tarts

Maple syrup is integral to the gooey, runny interior that these beloved sweet treats are known for. We highly recommend eating them over a plate to catch any filling that pours out. Get the recipe >

Cast Iron Squash Pudding

In this cakelike dessert from legendary Montreal restaurant Joe Beef, maple syrup brings out the earthy sweetness of the two types of squash—butternut and delicata. Get the recipe >

Crêpes With Maple Sugar and Syrup

It’s no surprise that these thin pancakes are layered and rolled with both maple syrup and sugar, as the dish comes from Bas-St-Laurent, Quebec’s second-largest maple syrup-producing region. Get the recipe >

Apple and Kale Salad With Black Sesame-Maple Cashews

Coated with maple syrup and black sesame seeds, crunchy cashews not only elevate this simple salad, but they also make an excellent snack on their own. Get the recipe >

Maple and Mustard-Glazed Ham

Celebrated chef Hugh Acheson balances out the sharpness of Dijon mustard and tanginess of cider vinegar with maple syrup in the glaze for this showstopping fresh ham. Get the recipe >

Bread Pudding With Caramel Sauce

Maple syrup enriches the batter for this bread pudding redolent with cinnamon and studded with raisins. Get the recipe >

Maple Syrup Milkshake

Vanilla ice cream is the perfect partner for maple syrup in this four-ingredient milkshake. Get the recipe >

Maple Pumpkin Brûlée Pie

Maple syrup is folded into the warmly spiced filling of this riff on the classic dessert. A dramatic caramelized top serves as the perfect finishing touch. Get the recipe >

Carrots Vichy

In the traditional version of this French side, carrots are cooked in water with sugar and butter to create a glaze. Here, chef Hugh Acheson swaps out the sugar for maple syrup and adds fresh marjoram and chiles, yielding an earthier dish with just the right amount of heat. Get the recipe >

Maple Syrup-Roasted Tomatoes

Transform humdrum cherry or grape tomatoes into flavor bombs by cooking them low and slow in the oven with maple syrup, thyme, and garlic. Get the recipe >

Wild Rice Soup With Maple Syrup

Sweet maple syrup plays nicely with earthy mushrooms and thyme in this rich, creamy soup. Get the recipe >

Maple Syrup Dumplings

Spoonfuls of buttery dough are cooked in a pot of boiling maple syrup for these rich dumplings. Get the recipe >

Maple-Glazed Carrots With Hazelnut Crumbs

Juicy orange segments cut through the sweetness of maple syrup in this colorful, beautifully balanced side dish finished with fresh cilantro. Get the recipe >

Maple Squares with Walnuts

This one’s for the real maple heads: these chewy dessert squares call for both maple syrup and maple sugar. Serve them in shallow bowls with a splash of cream on top. Get the recipe >

Wet Nuts

This popular sundae topping gets its gooey sweetness from a mixture of maple syrup and light corn syrup. Get the recipe >

The post 21 Sweet and Savory Ways to Make the Most of Maple Syrup appeared first on Saveur.

“If you want to impress your guests the next time you have people over, add maple-marinated mustard seeds to a beet salad or charcuterie board. For extra points, tell them it’s mustard caviar!” —Laurent Dagenais

Adapted from Always Hungry! by Laurent Dagenais. Copyright © 2023. Available from Robert Rose.

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“The combination of parsnip and maple is just incredible. I can’t tell you why, but it’s legendary,” writes Montreal-based chef Laurent Dagenais in his cookbook Always Hungry! We can attest that the syrup brings out the natural sweetness of the root vegetable, and while the resulting soup is delicious on its own, a handful of homemade garlic-thyme croutons and a drizzle of olive oil take it over the top.

Adapted from Always Hungry! by Laurent Dagenais. Copyright © 2023. Available from Robert Rose.

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Montreal-based chef Laurent Dagenais first made this showstopping main at a cabane à sucre, or sugar shack, in Quebec to celebrate maple syrup season. Here, the ingredient is used to glaze the pork as it braises in the oven.

Adapted from Always Hungry! by Laurent Dagenais. Copyright © 2023. Available from Robert Rose.

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“After my parents’ divorce in the 1970s, Mom and I did the best we could to cobble a new family unit together. Part of that was creating new traditions. We found one in our regular pilgrimages to Duarte’s Tavern in Pescadero, California. After a two-hour drive from our Bay Area home and a brisk walk along the craggy coast, we would head to Duarte’s and warm up over steamy bowls of cream of artichoke soup. 

Opened in 1894, Duarte’s was everything you wanted a California diner to be, and it still is. Unlike other such establishments, which have been what I like to call “arugulaized,” Duarte’s still serves classics like BLTs and burgers along with local specialties, including Pacific-caught fish and plenty of artichoke dishes. Then there are the desserts, my favorite being the olallieberry pie, made with the tangy West Coast hybrid fruit. It’s quite possibly the best pie on Earth. My mother is gone now. But when I go back to Duarte’s for a bowl of that artichoke soup, I can’t help thinking I’m keeping our relationship alive.” —James Oseland

Featured in “The SAVEUR 100” in the January/February 2013 issue.

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This fragrant, five-ingredient Taiwanese side dish can also be made with butternut squash. Travel writer Matt Gross learned how to make this recipe from A-Mui Huang, a home cook in Taipei.

Featured in “Taipei Family Style” by Matt Gross in the April 2010 issue.

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I had the great fortune of growing up near the cultural epicenter of Chattogram, Bangladesh in an area called DC Hill. It’s lush with greenery and is bordered by the flower district, a Buddhist monastery, a handful of Hindu temples, and numerous mosques—a truly secular locale where the city’s Bengali New Year festivities, or Noboborsho, are held each year. April 14th marks the first day of the Bengali calendar, or Pohela Boishakh. It begins with mangal shobhajatra, a parade of vivid red and white sharis and punjabis. Giant masks of Bengali mythical creatures float above the procession. Songs by Rabindranath Tagore fill the air alongside the scent of bhortas (mustard oil-laden mashes) and various pithas (rice flour-based cakes and dumplings). 

It’s been over a decade since my last Noboborsho back home, the memories of which are now immortalized on my palate: The subtly acrid taste of panta bhat (fermented rice), which frankly, no kid really liked; the way our tongues learned to detect the needle-like pin bones of deep-fried hilsa fish from an early age; and the unceasing flow of food out of the kitchen, breakfast segueing into lunch and lunch turning into dinner. Once I moved to the States, I had to find a way to celebrate the Bengali New Year without these built-in festivities and surrounded by new people.

During my years living in Chicago and Los Angeles, Noboborsho celebrations were nominal and quiet, with some white rice, a few bhortas, and dal (lentil soup) that my partner and I would eat in front of the television. Moving to New York City in 2021 was like a homecoming: I was reunited with many childhood friends and had access to a robust Bengali community again. And with Jackson Heights and its many Bangladeshi grocery stores just a train ride away, I no longer had to yearn for my mother’s pantry. 

This year’s fête—my biggest one yet—was delightfully crammed into my Williamsburg apartment, with a spread so ample that there’s no question I’m turning into my mother. The guest list represented the full spectrum of our diaspora: some were raised in Bangladeshi American households while others hailed from my hometown of Chattogram—a food writer pal, Mehr Singh, who grew up in New Delhi and observed Vaisakhi, the Punjabi New Year, at this time of year; and a former coworker, Urmila Ramakrishnan, who grew up in the U.S. blending Bengali and Tamilian traditions—all donning their best, most exuberant South Asian ’fits with a certain vivacity that mimicked the spirit of bygone Noboborsho celebrations. Among us were also a few friends of the culture, like my friend Tyler and my husband Charlie, whose taste buds are well-trained to take the heat of Bengali cooking. 

At its core, a Noboborsho feast is the truest form of Bengali home cooking. Rice is always the star, so of course my table had three different kinds: panta bhat that was fermented overnight and drizzled with mustard oil, a pot of golden-hued khichuri, and plain white rice. The menu also featured stewed chicken and potatoes, warm with cumin, coriander, and tons of garlic and ginger—a dish I’m willing to bet is on any Bengali’s comfort list. But maybe not on that list is stir-fried bitter melon and potatoes. Just as the stewed chicken elicited squeals of joy from guests, the sight of those distinctive green craggly bits prompted displeased groans. “I’m having flashbacks of being force-fed bitter melon as a child,” my friend Farooque, a music producer, joked. I promised the crowd that the potatoes temper the bitterness, hoping to turn skeptics into believers. 

I’m fairly certain my Chittagonian card would’ve been revoked if I skipped the kala bhuna, a beef dish hailing from my hometown that’s slow-cooked with freshly ground spices until dark and tattered. As is required by our very strict, very real ordinance of Bengaliness, seafood is essential for a New Year’s feast. There’s even an old adage, mache bhate Bangali, that means “fish and rice make a Bengali.” 

While hilsa, our national fish and the emblem of our ethnic identity, is most common for Noboborsho back home, it can be hard to find on this side of the world. Not to mention, it’s a menacing creature that requires shrewd eyes and a crafty tongue to dodge its copious hair-thin pinbones. So I opted for another, less perilous classic: paturi. Traditionally, paturi calls for wrapping pretty much any lean fish in banana leaves, then steaming it. My version, however, is swathed in an edible alternative—collard greens—and pan-fried. The filling features diced shrimp marinated with mustard oil, black and brown mustard seeds, ginger, garlic, onion, green chiles, and tons of cilantro. 

Alongside the main dishes, small bowls of flavorful bhortas are scattered across the table. These mashes generally follow a simple blueprint: A star ingredient is blended with hot green chiles, sliced onions, cilantro, and tons of mustard oil. The three bhortas on my table included one with boiled eggs, one with roasted tomatillos, and one with charred scallions. My favorite element on the table is a riff on a family heirloom strawberry rhubarb achar recipe; it’s a springtime take on the tangy-sweet condiment my grandmother used to make with young green mangoes.  

At any Bengali meal, one thing is eternally nonnegotiable: Eating with your hand—your right hand to be exact (for reasons unfitting for a food publication). For those unfamiliar, the first instinct is to rely solely on the four long fingers to do the scooping. But as I often remind my non-Bengali friends, use your god-given primate privileges—the opposable thumb—to deliver that perfect bite into your mouth.

Once the plates were cleared and everyone’s hands were clean, I brought out the mishti doi (jaggery-infused yogurt) for a sweet finish. Admittedly, it’s one of those things not many Bengalis like to make at home—one, because it’s truly a labor of love, and two, because there are ample legacy yogurt makers across the region who have it down to a science, most notably in the Northern Bangladesh city of Bogura. I took a mental picture of the moment—us eating yogurt right out the pot as Bengali folk music poured through the air—cementing the memory of my first big Bengali New Year bash with my chosen family. 

Recipes

Murgir Jhol (Bengali Chicken Stew)

Get the recipe >

Collard Shrimp Paturi

Get the recipe >

Strawberry Rhubarb Achar

Get the recipe >

Bitter Melon and Potato Stir-Fry

Get the recipe >

Mishti Doi (Bengali Sweet Yogurt)

Get the recipe >

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