Autumn Catch-Up

Wow...Hi everyone. Shy wave. I haven't done one of these in a while!

It's nearly December. The LPC is buckling down as we enter the assessments phase of the autumn term. I'm firmly back in the rat race, shuttling from north London into the City and back again every day, a glimpse into the next few decades. The trees are mostly bare and skeletal, the weather increasingly frigid and harsh, and the political climate's not much better.

But life goes on. We wrap up against the cold. Quite literally. I've got a new hat and gloves as I've seemingly lost every piece of knitwear I own (every year, Tamsin, every year.) Our little wood-burning stove is stretched to breaking point. And emotional bubblewrap swaddles the shellshocked West in the form of tearjerking Christmas ads - including one for Amazon, written by my dad, Adrian Lim, which went out earlier this week. It tells the story of the friendship of a (real-life) vicar and imam who bond over their gammy knees. Jeff Bezos himself tweeted about it. So proud of you, Pa.

Here's a few of the fun things I've been up to over the past couple of months, all rolled into one bumper blog post! 

I snuggled up in blankets and chowed down on hot dogs with friends from work to welcome in the autumn with a Rooftop Film Club viewing of When Harry Met Sally. What a film. What a soundtrack. What a range of hairstyles Meg Ryan sports. 

I went to visit B's hometown, Liverpool, a few times over the summer and in early September, and got the full (Magical Mystery) tour. We caught a fantastic and unsettling Francis Bacon retrospective at the Tate on Albert Dock, ticked off the Beatles landmarks in B's village (hey, Eleanor Rigby's grave, Strawberry Fields and John Lennon's house!) visited the knee-shakingly beautiful Liverpool Central Library, made crumble with apples from B's garden, and ate at three seriously wonderful places which you must visit if you're ever up in Liverpool.

East Avenue Bakehouse (112 Bold Street, Liverpool L1 4HY). The lightest, fluffiest hummingbird cake you could wish for, plus platters groaning with the best meats, seafood and vegetables that the season has to offer, plus cheese from The Liverpool Cheese Company, B's sublime local cheesemonger.

Maray (91 Bold Street). B practically dragged me in here the second I stepped off the train to show me just how good - and affordable - Liverpool's food offerings can be. Small plates of crisp whitebait, smoky roasted cauliflower and rich octopus swimming in swampy black beans drew me in and made me seriously reconsider my life choices. 

Baltic Bakehouse (46 Bridgewater Street, Liverpool L1 0AY), in the seriously cool Baltic Triangle area of the city. This coffee shop has it all, as far as I'm concerned - great coffee and tea, brilliant sourdough that makes exceptional toasties and sandwiches, plus sticky cinnamon rolls best enjoyed with a cup of tea at home. Oh, and the stripped-back, industrial aesthetic doesn't hurt either.

Back in London, I made concessions to my Chinese-Malaysian heritage. I bought a hillock of mooncakes at Chinatown's Mid-Autumn festival, then ate my body weight in cucur udang, nasi lemak and apam balik at Trafalgar Square's Malaysia Night. I'm so excited to be heading back to Kuala Lumpur for a short trip over Christmas and New Year. I haven't been in three years, so please, anyone who's been recently and has recommendations for good things to do and makan, hit me up! 

I also acquainted myself with a billion different canapés at the launch of ROMA (14 New London St, London EC2R 7NA), a brand new wine bar and restaurant offering the flavours and cooking techniques of ancient Rome under the shadow of that modern monolith, the Walkie-Talkie. City folks, head here for Italian food with a difference - their charcuterie is especially good!

I got hooked on the spice at Xi'An Impression (117 Benwell Road, London N7 7BW), up near Arsenal's Emirates Stadium. While it's not the cheapest Chinese cafe you'll find in the city, they do seriously good hand-pulled noodles, chewy and bathed in chilli oil, moreish 'beef burgers' and beautiful, refreshing petal-like yikouxiang. 

I've been doing a fair amount of baking (probably in part prompted by the tragic final season of my beloved GBBO) now that the nights have turned colder and longer. One of the bakes I'm most proud of was this fluffy Apfelkuchen, full of cinnamon and cooking apples bought from Marylebone market, which proud German B helped me to make, translating a trustworthy recipe and arranging the apple slices in an authentic pattern.

Finally, B and I took a trip back to Cambridge for the Festival of Ideas. Cambridge is our shared alma mater - despite attending neighbouring colleges, we weren't aware of each other's existence for the time we were there! Visiting the city still makes my heart palpitate a little faster with residual stress (multiple weekly essays, I don't miss you one bit) but it was so nice to experience the place with B and have the requisite heavy brunch at my college, see old friends and nostalgise over old lecture halls during talks at the Festival. My favourite? A lecture on whether emotions can travel from one language to another.

The stunning foliage covering B's college, Churchill, on Storey's Way, which I used to cycle past on my way to lectures.

Graduation taking place at Senate House. I'll be here early next year to pick up the honorary MA which every grad gets.

A return to the RFB, the languages building on the Sidgwick Site, where arts and humanities students attend lectures. Mixed memories, mainly happy ones, of drifting off in grammar classes and being drenched with cheap prosecco after exams here. 

My darling A, who's doing her PhD here, and who took B and I to Copper Kettle (3-4 King's Parade, Cambridge CB2 1SJ), a Cambridge tea shop staple opposite King's College for a cuppa and a slice of warm apple pie and cream.

What have you been up to this autumn so far? Have you been to any drool-worthy restaurants or visited any leafy little enclaves that I should put on my bucket list? 

Hungry for more? Continue the adventure on Bloglovin' | Twitter | Instagram!

Cambridge Christmas Formal

Christmas in Cambridge is a pretty special thing. The town centre is illuminated by a web of glittering lights, people go punting all huddled up in tartan blankets, the world renowned college choirs turn their skills to carols and if you're very lucky, the spires and quads may be covered in a light dusting of snow. (No such luck on the snow front this year as the south has felt like spring for the whole of the month, but it did happen in my first term at the university!) The first week of December also marks the eighth and final week of term, and the glut of festive college formals are inevitably incredibly popular, selling out in minutes. Luckily, a couple of my friends are still at the university, doing six year courses or else PhDs, and managed to get a couple of extra tickets for us to come along for one last Christmas formal at college. 

For those of you who've been reading my blog for some time you'll be quite aware of what formal entails (a three-course dinner with silver service in hall). You may also know that my college isn't one of the 'Harry Potter', dreaming spires ones, but rather one of the first established specifically to give women a Cambridge education in the fifties, and moved into the (some say Brutalist, I say iconic) sixties building complete with spaceship-esque dome, designed by Barbican architects Chamberlin, Powell & Bon. We're allowed to walk on the grass here, and no, our buildings don't date back to the 15th century. But do we have good formal? Oh hell yes. 

I legged it from the City to King's Cross to catch my Cambridge train after lectures mid-week, enveloping myself in my old black gown in the taxi up to college, power walking up the spiral staircase to Dome with a nod to our President (Dame Barbara Stocking, former Chief Executive of Oxfam - see top photo!) standing in for the angel on top of the tree, and joining my friends at the grad table after grabbing a glass of sherry from the Fellows' Dining Room. Not flustered at all. Crackers were pulled, groan-worthy jokes read out. Then the gong sounded and formal began! Good - I was starving. 

So you know how I was boasting about how great our formals are? Well, that doesn't quite extend to Christmas formal. It's just a standard Christmas dinner in Week 8 - a prawn cocktail salad that looks slightly like it's just been unceremoniously tipped on to the plate, then a roast with all the trimmings and Christmas pud. It's still good though - at some of the older colleges, they quite literally serve Angel Delight for pudding. 

Oh yes, and did I mention that grad dining rights include a steady flow of wine, on the house?

My first, but certainly not last, pig in blanket of the Christmas season.

The lights in the Dome went down for the traditional presentation of the Christmas pudding - doused in alcohol and set aflame. Usually the chefs take their sweet time walking around with this baby, but this time they seemed in a hurry to get it back to the kitchen. I don't know why - it's not like we get that Christmas pudding or anything...

Perhaps it was the merry-inducing effects of the sherry, but I managed to polish off my teeny Christmas pud this year - something that never happens! Maybe I'm finally developing a taste for it, 24 years down the line...

And finally, mince pies, coffee and tea were trundled out for the end of formal. 

Love these ladies.

And if you can't finish your free mince pies, you have to take them away with you! (Oh, those polystyrene takeaway boxes from buttery take me right back). Well, it would be rude not to.

Thank you A, M and G for inviting us to formal! It was so lovely to catch up with my former housemates over dinner, and I can't wait to see you all in the new year. Merry Christmas, one and all!

Hungry for more? Continue the adventure on Bloglovin' | Twitter | Instagram!

Return to Cambridge

After graduating last June, I vowed that I wouldn't be one of those grads who sneak back on a regular basis and basically never leave. And although homesickness - uni-sickness? - did set in around October as idyllic punting and college snaps returned in force to my various social media feeds, I somehow managed to put off my own triumphant return until this month. (We're not going to mention that afternoon back in February when I caved and went back to see my friends for tea and cake in between various freak-outs in the Careers Service Library. Shh.)

One of my very first ventures on this blog was a post about my college's annual formal to mark International Women's Day - a particularly special event as we're a women's college. When the invite for this year's formal landed in my inbox, I didn't need much persuading. And neither did my best friends.

Roxy and I arrived back in the 'Bridge just as the sun was beginning to set, casting a golden glow over King's Parade and Market Square. This is the thing about Cambridge. Even on a rainy day it's stunningly pretty, and an unsuspecting visitor would never associate it with the agonies its students go through (I'll just put it out there: two essays a week and at least five or six 3-hour exams in one week at the end of each year.) I actually felt my chest start to hurt as we arrived in town, which I'm going to chalk down to residual stress palpitations (!)

I'll probably never get over how gorgeous King's College is. I mean, look at it. Ridiculous.

On your left, ladies and gentlemen: Senate House, the scene of my graduation last June. Time and its tendency to fly really does scare me sometimes!

Although when we gathered for formal in the Dome, it felt as if no time had passed at all.

Murray Edwards has stepped up its formal game. And I'm not complaining. (Free alumnae dining rights, y'all.)

Photo courtesy of Clare Cotterill

To start...a salad of purple potatoes, sprouting broccoli and polenta with an avocado dressing.

And for our main, sweet grilled red mullet with chakalaka. I personally thought chakalaka was the part of the egg Norman from the Great British Bake Off advocated removing, but apparently it's an African spiced bean and pepper compote. Yum.

The day before International Women's Day also happened to be Japan Day. Our college is partnered with Tokyo's Kaetsu University and has a Japanese cultural centre attached to it, so we were treated to a brief interlude of Japanese hip-hop dance while we waited for dessert. The dancing definitely brought out my inner East Asian fangirl, nurtured during my Oriental Society days at school and something of a secret since then...

And finally, dessert! Continuing the Land of the Rising Sun theme, we were served honey Castella Cake, a type of Japanese sponge, with mango and passion fruit sorbet, coconut cream and grilled mango slices. This one knocked it out of the park. Easily one of the best desserts I've had at Murray Edwards formal (or any other college formal), the flavour combinations were right up my street. It reminded me a little of a refined version of Thai khao niao mamuang, minus the glutinous rice.

No trip to Murray Edwards is complete without a visit to see the resident college beetles.

In first year Imarin and I got in a tiny bit of trouble for running down here after dinner and taking selfies astride the beetles (endless hijinks with the college art were had through our years at college, I tell you) - totally unaware that there was a CCTV camera fixed on us.

Photo courtesy of Clare Cotterill

We're obviously waaaaay more mature five years down the line...

Photo courtesy of Ran Huo

Cambridge, it's been fun. Let's do it again soon? 

Thank you to Murray Edwards College for providing a delicious New Hall Society formal! It was so lovely to have an excuse to see some of the ladies from my matriculation year group and run around college like an undergrad again. I'm already looking forward to next year! 

Hungry for more? Continue the adventure on Bloglovin' | Twitter | Instagram!