Spirit Forward

Summer and the Art of Living

Bare feet and butterflies, harvest parades and fresh cut grass; ticks and blistered skin, garden greens and ripe, red fruit galore; wild foraging and dirty knees, star gazing and porch sitting; potlucks and golden hour cocktails. Summer, sweet and fleeting, in Wisconsin.

Having spent nearly all of my 33 years rooted above the 44th parallel, I live for summer and its long days and warm, sun-infused breezes. And when spring comes early, as it did this year, I am, as my mother would say, “one happy camper.”

Despite my best effort to slow life’s busy pace, summer seems to pass in a blur and before I know it the days have shortened and iced sun tea is replaced with kettle-steeped tea and beach towels with wool blankets. This summer I am making a promise to myself, two simple words that are notso- simple to obey: “slow” and “down.”

Making space to enjoy the “art of living” can start with two simple yet life-sustaining ingredients: food and drink. The joys of growing, harvesting and preparing good food and drink can nourish a hectic life by creating space to enjoy the beauty that unfolds in the act of conscious living.

At one time, medicine—the “art of healing”— was linked with gastronomy—the “art of eating.” Cultures with the sense and ability to embrace food as medicine are today some of the healthiest and most life-abundant peoples. Here, too, in the Driftless Region of Wisconsin, we are blessed in this way, and it is about time I embrace a slower pace of life.

It was Aristotle’s apprentice and Greek poet, Archestratus, who gave us the word “gastronomy” from his 5th century B.C. Gastronomia, one of the first regionally-driven and seasonal accounts of Mediterranean cooking. Later, the Italians embraced food as cultural identity, where life, art and food were often one and the same and completely embedded in one’s family, village and region. The Italians refer to this as nostrano, literally meaning “our own”; but more than that, it means locally grown with a strong emotional claim to “my land and my home shared with you.”

The artisans of our Wisconsin food and farms evoke a strong sense of nostrano. From the bountiful Great Lakes to the lush pastures and rich, organic soil, we are blessed with the ingredients and desire to share with family and community the riches of land and inland sea. Just as the culinary meccas of Italy, France, Spain and California were realized and built on what the land produced, Wisconsin is drawing attention as a rising, not-so-secret, culinary world’s dream come true. And lucky for us, we have amazingly skilled hands at the wheel. Hands inspiring us to master the art of living by slowing down and enjoying the art of eating…and drinking.

Nostrano

When Wisconsin-born and Italian-trained Chef Tim Dahl returned to his Madison roots in the fall of 2009 following a successful run in Chicago’s fast-paced and ambitious boutique restaurant boom, it seemed only fitting that he would name his pie-shaped, south-end of Capital Square restaurant Nostrano. Together with his wife and pastry chef, Elizabeth Dahl, they have been a culinary force in Madison’s quickly rising food and drink scene. Nostrano is well-recognized as a local leader in ingredient-driven, regionally-inspired cuisine where old-world, artisan-style cooking and mixology highlights the best of Wisconsin-grown and -produced foods and beverages.

Tim and Elizabeth set out to create a high-quality dining experience with none of the high-brow fuss often associated with haute cuisine. No dress code, white tablecloths or haughty servers. Sleek and simple furnishings adorn a cozy dining space accentuated by an intimate eight-seat bar.

The Dahls run a highly collaborative kitchen where ego is put aside and the creative whole of the savory, pastry and bartending team is embraced. This is evident in the subtle harmony of their small plate, dinner, dessert and cocktail creations, where each offering is perfectly suited to the season and the palate.

At Nostrano, the eater will delight in a small plate of earthy Chioggia beets and kohlrabi accented by a pleasantly bitter and acidic horseradish cream that perfectly highlights the subtle salty cure of arctic char. Follow this up with a housemade fennel sausage and hand-pressed Orecchiette pasta with Brussels sprouts and Fiore Sardo (a sharp, raw Sardinian sheep’s milk cheese). The summer savory menu will likely be inspired by farmers market finds, only steps from Nostrano’s front door, and the family’s herb and produce garden at Tim’s parent’s Prairie View Farm on Madison’s west side, which is home to the Kids Express Learning Center.

In your quest to master the art of living and eating as one, don’t even think about skipping dessert. Try any one of Nostrano’s Italian and seasonally inspired not-too-sweet creations. You’ll leave wanting more.

Spirit-Forward

While Tim masters the savory side and Elizabeth’s mean pastry skills are at work on the sweeter dishes, Grant Hurless, Nostrano’s head mixologist, performs artistic genius behind the bar in the form of a seasonally revolving, kitchen- and garden-inspired cocktail menu. Simply put, this guy knows what he’s doing, and he does it well—impeccably well.

In a city abundant with bartenders, Hurless is at the top of a slim list of skilled Madtown mixologists who push the limits of classic bartending. Cocktail historian and revolutionary in one, Hurless has a chef ’s understanding of how to properly prepare and combine sweet and savory ingredients with top-shelf, and sometimes lesser-known, distilled spirits and liqueurs.

Hurless got his start as a bar apprentice at the culinary Chicago landmark The Drawing Room. With an aggressive and innovative culinary cocktail program, Hurless learned from the best in the business, taking the reins as Nostrano’s head mixologist in the fall of 2011. He works collaboratively with the kitchen to build a menu that is complimentary to the season, the availability of local ingredients, and whatever is brewing in the back of the house.

My palate is drawn to cocktails infused with house-made or locally-made bitters, such as Door County cherry or orange bitters from the Milwaukee-based- Madison-produced Bittercube, makers of “slow-crafted Midwest bitters.” As an herb enthusiast, I appreciate the inventive use of herbs to both intensify and sometimes mellow a cocktail’s flavors. Hurless’ use of a lavender Herbes de Provence essence misted over the top of a North Shore #6 gin and house-made tonic with Ceylon cinnamon is a sensual drinking experience. There is no way to compare this with the sweet and nasty, bigger-than-my-face fishbowl margaritas from my younger years (thank God).

Hurless is most recently inspired by the work of Canadian chemist-turned-cocktail-wizard Darcy O’Neil, author of the most widely-read cocktail blog on the internet, Art of Drink. His book Fix the Pumps fills the historical literary gap of the American soda fountain, while also serving as a craft mixologist’s guide to the cocktail renaissance.

Today’s cocktail revival has as much to do with raising the bar on classic 19th and early-20th century cocktails as it does with inventing non-traditional drinks with a culinary twist—and always with the intention of showcasing the quality of the spirit instead of masking it with sweet mixers. Old or new, the emphasis is on fresh ingredients, house-made mixers and artisanal and small batch spirits. Let it be certain, today’s gin and tonics, sazeracs and manhattans are nothing like your grandfather’s drinks. The quality of the ingredients matched with the skill and artistry of today’s master mixologists is changing the way the world consumes and enjoys alcohol.

While I plan to leave the serious mixing to the professionals, I am inspired by Hurless’ creativity and ability to infuse his drinks with subtle yet sometimes satisfyingly intense herbal notes, with not-too-sweet fruity concoctions, and always with a palate-pleasing bitter, acidic balance. To be honest, his cocktails are fantastic and there is no way I can recreate what he does in my home kitchen—though I am inspired to try.

Summer is the best season to let the experimentation commence. My garden will soon be overflowing with tasty cocktail fixings like cherries, currants, gooseberries, plums, raspberries, strawberries, tomatoes, celery, cucumber, and a myriad of herbs including basil, cilantro, dill, lavender, lemon verbena, mint and rosemary. And my local co-op just so happens to carry an excellent variety of top-shelf, small batch spirits from the upper Midwest.

Not so many years ago, I fell into the habit of sharing a golden-hour cocktail in my summer garden with my good friend and neighbor, Patricia Nelson, under the pink glow of Mount Baker in Washington State. Although 50 years separated us in age, we were like soul sisters and our laughter would carry on the wind as we pulled weeds together, planned the next year’s garden expansion and sipped our gin and tonics. Before calling it a day, we would each collect our daily harvest and share dinner recipe ideas. Not all old habits are bad habits; it may be time to resurrect the golden hour cocktail with friends and neighbors and, heck, while we’re at it, throw in a weekly dinner, too.

Spirit-forward is a term for the resurgence of spirit-based cocktails that are meant to be sipped and savored—just as with life. Thus, a toast: Spirit-forward, friend, and cheers to the “art of living.”