12a Club, Cambridge

Cambridge Market Square
View over Cambridge's Market Square from the 12a Club

I live twelve miles outside Cambridge, far away enough that the only traffic is tractors and the occasional little girl on a horse. I’m in town a few times a week, but you’ll have noticed that I don’t have a lot to say about Cambridge on Gastronomy Domine. It’s not, to put it politely, a restaurant or bar destination. The city has what the papers call a “carbon-copy high street” problem: a survey last year found it the third worst town in the country for independent retailers and restaurants.

There’s a historical reason for this. Almost all of the property in the city centre is owned by the university colleges, and their monopoly on rents means that they can raise prices to a level that’s just not attainable for small businesses. As a result, the city centre has silted up with chains. It’s kind of depressing to reach the realisation that Jamie’s Italian is the best you’re going to manage without hopping on a bike or getting a cab. (You’re not going to be driving; the parking situation is horrible too.) The bar situation is, if anything, even worse – massive chains like B Bar, All Bar One and Revolution crammed to sweaty unpleasantness with student rugby clubs and belligerent sixth formers.

So when my buddy Douglas asked me to come with him to check out a new bar right on the Market Square, about as central as you can get, I was unenthusiastic. “It’ll prolly be horrid,” I texted back; “Central Cam, ffs. All the bars here = rubbish.”

I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to be proved wrong in my life.

The 12a Club is on the upper floors of one of the only privately owned buildings in this part of town. The colleges and city council have the ability to impose some rather stringent licensing restrictions on new openings, and the restrictions they hit the owners of 12a with would have stopped most businesses dead in their tracks. The licence says the bar has to operate as a private members’ club. There can be no advertising; all new business has to come in by word of mouth. And 12a isn’t even allowed a sign outside the door. Add to this the fire department’s refusal to grant a hot food licence because of the age of the building, throw in some health and safety regulations about not being allowed to open the lovely Victorian sash windows, and you’ve got the sort of business that’s going to require some very creative thinking and a couple of air conditioning units to get underway.

12a Club
Main bar area, 12a Club

We were buzzed in through a little door between a touristy Italian restaurant and Marks and Spencer, climbed a narrow flight of stairs – and found ourselves in a 21st-century speakeasy. This is the direction the restrictive licensing has inspired the owners to take the place in: quietly masculine dark woods, raw brick and distressed leather, decoration recalling the 1920s, huge vases of lilies, and a soft vintage feel. The room pretty much instructs you to sit back and get comfortable with the aid of some snappy waitress service; the handsomely stocked bar provides all the extra encouragement you’ll need.

The champagne and wine list is, in keeping with the secretive nature of things in these parts, hidden in the back of an old book. A bookmark turns out, on closer inspection, to be a cocktail list: fantastic, grown-up, pre-prohibition cocktails of the sort we’ve almost forgotten about, all Aviations, Gimlets and Gourmets. This list is only a suggestion, meant to set the tone for your evening; even if you’re more the pink girly drink kind of person, they’ll happily knock up any cocktail you ask for. There are some people seriously educated in the art of the cocktail behind this bar, though, and it’s worth trusting their expertise and widening your horizons a little beyond strawberry daiquiris. There are six different kinds of bitters on the bar, floral syrups, a jar of house-made limoncello infusing away, and by far the most comprehensive and eclectic list of spirits that I’ve seen this side of London.

Menus and top hat
A stack of wine lists masquerading as books

It was the little details that really caught me at 12a. The smell of wood polish in the main room; the ice in my drinks (not cubes, but hand-carved spheres, so your cocktail isn’t diluted by a fast melt); the exceptional drinks smarts of Mark, our host, who works front-of-house and performs alchemy behind the bar. He offered to “surprise me” with a cocktail – and he’d been listening so carefully to my waffling about food and drink over the preceding hour that he managed to get my taste down absolutely pat. An Old Fashioned with Gosling’s dark rum and shavings of dark chocolate, pepped up with one of those bottles of bitters (I wish I’d had the presence of mind to ask which one) which married the rum to the chocolate so smoothly it was almost enough to bring a tear to the eye. Hands down my favourite cocktail so far this year. A visit later in the week with a whisky-hound friend from New York saw Mark speak to him for a minute about his preferences and come back with a soft whisky finished in sauternes barrels which, he said, suited him so well it was as if Mark had read his mind. On our original visit, Douglas was presented with a Cambridge Butterfly: a work-in-progress cocktail that isn’t yet on the menu. Grapefruit, Butterfly absinthe, and god only knows what else. I hope it makes it onto the permanent list; I don’t think I’ve tasted a cocktail with such an interesting flavour profile before, swinging wildly in the mouth from citrus to liquorice to sugary sweetness to a floral intensity.

The 12a Club is pretty new, and they’re still tweaking the formula. There are ideas for a salumi room; for a less tightly-focussed wine list (at the moment most of what’s on offer is Italian wine, which can be a little impenetrable for some); for monthly tastings of wines, whiskies and rums; members’ events like a 1920s New Year’s Eve party; and quarterly charity nights. A change I’d really like to see is the addition of an espresso machine, but given that this is the only thing that occurred to me after a couple of weeks’ considered attempt to find something wrong with the place, I’d say that they have things pretty much down pat as it is.

Behind the bar
Behind the bar

As of June 7, there’s a plan to open in the day so that members can have access to the two very private upstairs rooms, which have all the audio-visual equipment needed for business meetings. At the moment, these rooms are free to use on a first-come, first-served basis for members. (They’re also very pleasant for less serious get-togethers.) This sort of focus on business clients is a smart move; I can’t be the only person in these parts who has an occasional need for meeting rooms, and my experience elsewhere in the city has been both expensive and totally uninspiring. These rooms are much more up my street: beautiful, comfortable…and with waitress service and a champagne list.

The club has a bare-bones website with contact details and membership information. Head on over to have a look!

Hot buttered rum batter

For years, I thought I didn’t like hot buttered rum very much. An oily smear of butter floating on a thin pool of rum-flavoured hot water – nobody’s idea of fun. And then last winter, I saw someone in a restaurant at Lake Tahoe (Ciera at the Montbleu hotel – pricey but pleasant) drinking a creamy, hot, cinnamon-smelling glass of something wonderful. I asked the waiter what it was – hot buttered rum. I ordered a glass: rich and buttery, spicy, full of heat and kick from the rum, and silky smooth. How did they get it to emulsify in the glass like that? The waiter said he wasn’t allowed to give me a recipe, but did say that the chef made it with a sort of batter he prepared using butter and ice cream, and kept it in the freezer. It’s the ice cream which makes the mixture, butter and all, emulsify so pleasingly and creamily in the glass (or mug, if you’re at home); and a tub you’ve made for yourself will keep for months in the freezer, so it’s an excellent thing to have on hand for surprise guests. As far as Christmas/winter drinks go, this one’s approximately 100% bad for you (do not do what I did last night and have four of them in a row if you don’t want to feel a bit unwell), which unfortunately means it’s also about 100% delicious.

I made up a few different sets of batter from recipes I found on the Internet. None of them really hit the spot; in common with a lot of American recipes, I found most of them very, very sweet and a bit bland, relying on the vanilla ice cream for much of their flavour. The recipe below is my take on things, rather less sugary than most of the US recipes. I’ve also used maple syrup along with soft brown sugar for its flavour; and I’ve spiced quite aggressively, especially when it comes to the nutmeg, which has a wonderful affinity with rum. Allspice, like the rum, is Jamaican in origin, and works incredibly well here. And don’t save this mixture just for dolloping in your hot rum and water: as I write this, I’m drinking a lump of the stuff dissolved in a strong mug of coffee, and it’s heavenly.

Things like this make winter a bit less grim.

To make just over a litre of batter to keep in the freezer, you’ll need:

500ml vanilla ice cream
500g salted butter, softened
200g soft brown sugar
200ml maple syrup
1½ tablespoons allspice
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 whole nutmeg, grated

Let the ice cream sit at room temperature until it’s the texture of whipped cream. (You can also make this once the ice cream is completely melted, but I prefer the lighter texture you can achieve using a half-melted tub.) In a large bowl, use an electric whisk to cream together the butter, brown sugar and maple syrup until you have a thick, fluffy mixture. Dump the spices on top with the ice cream and continue to whisk for about five minutes, until the batter is smooth and light. Transfer to containers for freezing.

When you come to make up your drink, just put a dollop of the mixture at the bottom of a mug or glass (I like about three heaped teaspoons in a small mug – your mileage may vary) and add a measure of rum with a small pinch of salt. The salt won’t make the drink salty, but it will act to lift the buttery flavour. Pour over water straight from the kettle to fill the mug, stir until the batter is dissolved, sit down in front of the fire and get drinking.

Gordon’s Gin competition

Are there any two sweeter words than “gin competition”?

While I’m busy in my pyjamas today recovering from Phoenix and its near-deadly lawn chairs (see previous post), I’ve got another competition for you. This time, you can win a Gordon’s Gin Friday Pack, full of everything you need for a Friday night in with friends. The pack will include a bottle of Gordon’s Gin, a set of Gordon’s glassware and a Gordon Ramsey cook book.

The deadline for this one is Friday October 9. To enter, leave a comment below letting me know what you’d do with the gin; I could do with some new cocktail ideas!

Entrants must be resident in the UK, and over 18 years old. And although I think this is nannying you to a degree you don’t require – it’s not my business if you enjoy drinking gin by the bottle – I am required to display the Drinkaware logo, which I think is meant to discourage you from doing anything that might get your stomach pumped. Here it is – click on it if you want governmental advice on how to deal with a hangover.

Crème de mures – blackberry liqueur

A reader from France emailed me a few weeks ago with her own recipe for Crème de Cassis: blackcurrant liqueur for making Kir with. Kir is one of my favourite apèritifs – use one measure of Crème de Cassis or Crème de Mures (the same liqueur made with blackberries rather than blackcurrants) in a glass of five measures of chilled white wine. A Kir prepared with sparkling wine is a Kir Royale, and is also blimmin’ brilliant. Thank you very much, Jacqueline – and if you email me again to let me know what your surname is, I can give you a full credit for the recipe!

In this part of the world, blackcurrants are hard to find and very expensive when you do get your hands on them. Blackberries, however, quite literally grow on trees at the moment, and the method and amounts you’ll need for a crème de mures will be exactly the same. So if you want to make the most of this year’s surprisingly good blackberry harvest, get gathering at the weekend and produce a couple of home-made bottles of crème de mures (or crème de cassis if you have a handy currant bush) to impress people with.

Jacqueline says you’ll need:

1.5 kg ripe blackcurrants
2 litres of red wine (NOT the absolutely cheapest plonk)
Sugar

Wash the blackcurrants or blackberries, place in an earthenware pot or pyrex bowl and crush with a wooden spoon. Add the red wine and leave to macerate for 48 hours.

Filter, weigh the juice and add the same weight of sugar. Pour into an enamel or stainless steel saucepan (Jacqueline and I both used a Le Creuset pot) and heat to just boiling. Let it boil gently for 5 minutes, stirring with a wooden spoon from time to time. Leave to cool to about 40°C, filter and bottle.

If filtered well, and bottled into sterilised bottles and well corked this will keep indefinitely. Jacqueline says that for a filter, she makes bags out of calico with loops for suspending from the legs of an upturned stool, making sure the bowl can be lifted out from between the stool legs when full! I have a Lakeland jam stand – I’m not awfully fond of it, given that these days it’s a bit peely, but it does the job. Don’t be tempted to hurry up the filtering process – just leave gravity to do its job.

Cherry vodka

A quick and dirty one today – I’m in Cardiff to celebrate my sister-in-law’s PhD graduation. I am now officially the only Upton of my generation who can’t put the word ‘Dr’ in front of her name. Rats. (And congratulations, Stevie! I envy you the Tudor bonnet you get to wear for the ceremony like you wouldn’t believe.)

Cherries come into season just in time for you to lock them up in a cupboard with sugar and vodka until Christmas. Brandy is a traditional medium for fruit infusions; if you prefer to use that, the method will be the same. The five months between now and then will be just long enough for the liqueur to age into something nicely rounded and rich – an ideal tipple for Santa to enjoy with his mince pie. As always with fruity infusions, the making of this stuff is as easy as anything. You’ll need:

500g cherries
1 litre vodka
5 heaped tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon almond extract

Halve the cherries, keeping the stones embedded in the fruit for their almondy fragrance (I should pre-empt the inevitable “but you will die of cyanide poisoning!” comment – you won’t), and put them in a large Kilner jar or another large, airtight vessel. Pour over the sugar and almond extract, and top the lot off with the vodka. Seal, and forget about the jar for half a year or so, straining into bottles when the liqueur is ready. Note that the colour will leech out of the cherries, leaving them greyish and unappetising-looking in December; some like them with ice cream, but I prefer to just consign them to the bin and busy myself with the interesting part of this recipe (the vodka).

You can use dessert cherries (which is what I’ve used here), or sour bird cherries. I have a tree full of bird cherries in the garden, but they all grow so high I can’t actually reach any – plus, the birds seem to get a kick out of them, so I leave them where they are. If you’re using a sour cherry, double the amount of sugar in the recipe.

Strawberry lemonade

Yes, those are LEGO ice cubes. What of it?

This hot summer has meant that we’ve been blessed with some truly gorgeous strawberries this year – fat, fragrant, juicy and sweet. If you have a glut, this lemonade is so delicious you may well find yourself drinking it instead of eating a dessert. A shot of vodka in the bottom of the glass wouldn’t go amiss either.

I’ve used the strawberry variety called Florence here, which is more fragrant and flavourful than Elsanta (the potato-ish variety you are most likely to come across in the shops). This method, though, where you will find yourself macerating the chopped berries in sugar overnight, makes the most of even Elsanta. Macerating somehow makes them much fruitier in flavour, so use whatever variety you can get your hands on.

To make a jug of lemonade large enough for four glasses, you’ll need:

2 punnets of strawberries (about 500g)
4 heaped tablespoons caster sugar
Juice of 2 lemons
Water

Slice the strawberries into four or five pieces each, and sprinkle generously with the sugar in a large bowl. Mix well with a spoon, making sure every piece of fruit is well sugared, then cover the bowl with cling film and chill in the fridge for about 24 hours, until you are ready to make the lemonade.

When you come to put the lemonade together, pour the pink syrup that will have developed in the strawberry bowl (see picture) into a large jug, and transfer the macerated strawberries themselves to a sieve, making sure you catch any drips in a bowl. Use the back of a ladle to push the strawberries (which will have become very soft in the sugar bath) through the sieve into a bowl until you are left with the seeds and a stiff pulp in the sieve, which you can discard.

Add the pureed strawberries to the syrup in the jug and squeeze in the juice of two lemons. Now add between 1 and 2 glasses of water to the jug (the mixture will be too sweet and sharp without dilution) until you reach a level of flavour you find just right – amounts will vary depending on the particular strawberries you have chosen. Stir well and serve immediately with ice. This drink is unspeakably good packed into a Thermos flask for a picnic – give the Thermos a swift shake before pouring if you use one.

Pimm’s Fruit Cup

Summer in the UK is a fragile, short-lived and unreliable thing (yesterday, in flaming June, we had tornadoes and hailstones), so when the sun shines and the air is balmy, especially here in Cambridge, we tend to overcompensate slightly with garden parties, great strings of barbecued sausages, silly hats, flowery frocks and that sine qua non of chi-chi English outdoor gatherings: a few jugs of Pimm’s Fruit Cup. A sweet, pinkish liqueur based on gin, Pimm’s is available in every off-licence and supermarket in the country; and we mix it with lemonade and what bemused foreigners interpret as a fruit salad, kick back and proceed to get completely sloshed in the sun. There’s a certain class thing at work here. Shakespeare in the Park? We drink Pimm’s. Wimbledon? Pimm’s. May Balls? Pimm’s. Opera at Glyndebourne? Pimm’s. We also drink it because it’s delicious, potent and tends to render pretty 20-year-old students of both genders delightfully cuddly.

This fruity, aromatic, rounded cocktail base was invented by James Pimm, who ran a tavern in the City of London. He came up with the drink, based on gin with fruit, herbs and quinine, some time in the 1820s, soon finding it was so popular that he was able to produce it on a large scale to be sold to other taverns and clubs. It’s been a popular summer drink ever since, although the amount of alcohol in the stuff has definitely been reduced by the company that now owns the trademark (Pimm’s has in my lifetime reduced its alcohol percentage from 35% ABV to 25%). You can remedy this by adding a splash of gin to your cocktail.

Pimm’s is a substance sadly missed by those who come to the university here for a year or so from overseas. When visiting friends we made at university who have since moved back to America or other Pimm’s-free lands, we usually try to bring a bottle for them so we can all spend an evening reliving our glided youth. But I bear glad tidings for the overseas summer alcoholic. You can actually make the base mix for your Pimm’s (which we shall now call ‘fruit cup’ – and indeed, Pimm’s is not the only available brand; try Plymouth Fruit Cup for a rather more aromatic option, or Stone’s Fruit Cup for a distinct ginger kick) out of a mixture of liqueurs you may well have in the drinks cupboard already – use 2 parts 40% gin, 2 parts red vermouth, 1 part Cointreau (or your favourite orange liqueur), 1 part sweet port and a dash of Angostura bitters. It’ll be a bit stronger than the pre-bottled stuff, but it tastes very fine indeed. If you do decide to make your own fruit cup from scratch, Hendrick’s gin, with its cucumbery overtones, really comes into its own here – and if you use Dubonnet for your red vermouth, you can award yourself the Queen Mother seal of approval: Dubonnet was her all-time favourite liquid.

You should build your drink in a large jug by gently muddling a small handful of mint in 1 part Pimm’s or home-made fruit cup, then adding 1 part lemonade and 1 part ginger ale, with a good handful of soft English summer fruits, some sliced cucumber and fresh mint bobbing about in the jug with some ice. I like raspberries frozen into ice cubes, so they float rather than sink to the bottom initially – this means that you can arrange for some raspberries to end up in everybody’s glass, and the freezing makes the cell walls burst, so once the cubes have melted, the liquid at the bottom of your glass will be syrupy with raspberry juice. Borage flowers (a blue flower with a taste reminiscent of cucumber) are a traditional addition, and look lovely in the drink if you can find them. One jugful will be enough for a lovely boozy evening for two.

Floral mint tisane

This is my version of the gorgeous Staff Tisane from Alep and Petit Alep (the restaurants share a building at 199, rue Jean-Talon Est, Montreal (514) 270-6396). I’m eternally grateful to the very nice lady with the stylish glasses at Alep – the more formal of the two restaurants, which is only open in the evenings – who was able to find me a table for 11 people with only three hours’ notice on a Friday.

Alep and its little sister are Syrian-Armenian restaurants, and I challenge you to find better Middle Eastern food anywhere outside…you know, the Middle East. There are shish kebabs made with juicy, pink steak tenderloin. Muhammara (a walnut dip) running with pomegranate molasses. Tabbouleh which is gorgeously, correctly heavy on the parsley. We found some of the best prawns I’ve eaten this year; the food here is spicy, elegant and really, really tasty. Try the Menu Degustation at Alep in the evenings, which is extraordinarily good value at only $28 a head for far, far more than we could finish – dips, salads, spicy little beef sausages, seafood, lamb in a rose petal sauce, those glorious shish kebabs – you’ll leave stuffed and very happy. We went back to Le Petit Alep for lunch on the day we visited Jean Talon Market (they’re just around the corner) for lunch, and discovered that the spicy french fries, served with a bowl of mayonnaise, are the sort of thing you’d sell a grandparent into slavery for.

Alep’s drinks were fabulous. I got thoroughly sozzled on the home-made lemonade and vodka on the first night, then drank several of these tisanes the next day for lunch. I started trying to reproduce the tisane as soon as we got back to England, and I’m very pleased with this version. For every glass (or mug), you’ll need:

1 teaspoon orange flower water
1 teaspoon rose water
5 cardamom pods
3 leafy sprigs of mint
Slices of orange, lemon and lime to decorate

Bash the cardamom seeds lightly in a mortar and pestle to crack them slightly, and put them in a glass with the flower waters and the mint. Pour over freshly boiled water, leave to steep for five minutes and serve.

Sangria

I know plenty of books and Internet commentators will tell you strictly that you should only ever cook or mix cocktails with wines you would be happy to drink on their own. I thumb my (adorable button) nose at them. I’ve made this sangria twice in the last week with two different £3 bottles of Rioja, and I can assure you that using a more expensive bottle will simply be a waste of money – I cringe to imagine you stirring orange juice and sugar into a really good wine. On the other hand, it is worth buying a good lemonade for this drink (lemon soda like Sprite for Americans, not the fresh stuff). I like Schweppes.

You should make and drink your sangria in the same evening. If it hangs around for more than a few hours, the wine can oxidise and sour. The evening you make it, though, your sangria will be delicious: it’s a drink full of sunshine and goes very well with some salsa music and tapas.

To make 2 l of sangria, you’ll need:

1 bottle Rioja
3 large, juicy oranges
2 tablespoons caster sugar
1 lime
1 apple
1 small wineglass brandy
Lemonade
Ice

You’ll need a 2 l jug, preferably with a wide neck, to mix this in.

Dissolve the sugar in the juice of two of the oranges in the bottom of the jug. Slice the remaining orange, skin and all, into thick pieces with the lime and the cored apple, and drop them into the jug. Pour over the bottle of wine and the brandy, then add a large handful of ice and carefully fill the jug to the top with lemonade. Stir and serve immediately.

Rhubarb and ginger vodka

The rhubarb has come into season now. We don’t have enough room for a rhubarb crown in the garden, but when I was a kid, my parents had a large patch of it, the centre of which lurked under an upturned metal bucket in the early spring to force the pink stems. Gorgeous stuff, and I picked up a muddy armful at the market to make cake with this week, then found I had plenty left over. What better to do with it than turn it into a gorgeous pale-pink liqueur?

Here, much like the sloes in sloe gin, the rhubarb steeps for a couple months in sugar and alcohol, giving up its flavour and colour. I’ve also added ginger (rhubarb’s natural friend) and the zest of a lemon to the pot for extra zing. I’m afraid you’re going to have to restrain yourself for a couple of months before this is drinkable, but it’s well worth the wait.

For every litre of vodka you use, you’ll need:

600g rhubarb
300g caster sugar
3 inches of ginger root
Zest of one lemon

Pour the sugar into the bottom of a large jar (it should have at least double the capacity of the amount of vodka you’re using, and be airtight). Clean the rhubarb and slice it into 1-inch chunks and put it in the jar on top of the sugar. Slice the ginger (no need to remove the skin) into coins, and toss it in along with the zest of a lemon, pared carefully with a knife into wide strips.

Pour over the vodka, shake or stir well, and seal the jar up. Leave it at room temperature (it’ll be fine sitting on a shelf in the kitchen) for two months, at which point the rhubarb will look disgusting and grey, having given up all its juice and colour to the now pink vodka. Strain the mixture through a sieve lined with muslin into bottles. This liqueur is even better if you leave the finished bottles to mature for six months or so, but can be also drunk immediately.