record-breaking dinner

C, the very kind swedish gentleman that M put me in touch with, invited us to dinner in his lovely home last week. dinner had been in the pipelines for months, since soon after i arrived in stockholm, actually, and C generously organised dinner for us to meet his (much younger) swedish friends.

in true swedish fashion, we all arrived promptly at 6pm and had a few glasses of petroleum-scented riesling (apparently a good riesling's supposed to have notes of petrol o.O) as C ran through the menu. didn't take any photos, unfortunately, because i thought it might be rude. me and my prison of good manners :( but let's see if i can describe dinner the way it was.

C served an antipasti of fermented herring (i call it the antisocial herring because it smells so bad!), parma ham, bruschetta with chopped mushrooms and olives. i've probably left something out but in a nutshell, he served an italian dinner with swedish elements, like the herring and later, moose. after we polished off the antipasti, C served capellini with a sauce of crushed roasted pine nuts and truffle oil as the primo piatto. delicious! and for il secondo he did a beautiful entrecot of moose with steamed vegetables and a delectable sauce made from wild mushrooms. mmmm :) i'd never eaten moose before that and it was rare and gamey. i love my meats red! and it was truly exotic to be in the guest of a swedish host, eating moose in his cosy kitchen. C then served a selection of french and swedish cheese and while i can't remember the names, i really enjoyed his pickings. and the dolce was a delightful marsala sabayon that he whipped up on the spot and served in martini glasses with a berry on top. absolutely gorgeous! it feel so festive :) and i'm a big fan of pretentious foamy-thingums so the sabayon was up my alley all right. he made it look so easy as he whisked away and stirred the delicate creation in its bain-marie. more wine, coffee and sweets followed the marsala sabayon and riveting post-dinner conversation till 3am.

and because i really enjoyed getting to know C's two other guests, here's an excerpt from an email to my mother about dinner.

C had two Swedish gentlemen for dinner too. Guessing they were in their 20s and with fascinating backgrounds, one is a consultant with Accenture in Stockholm but spent his childhood all over the world (with his diplomat parents) and only just moved back to Sweden for good. The other's with Capital Management in Private Equity. Big words that unfortunately don't mean much to me right now. I'd to google 'private equity', embarrassingly enough. To cut a long story short, we'd a lovely 9h dinner (is that common???) from 6pm-3am. Learnt early on that the Swedes start their evening engagements early but I didn't realise we'd only be done at 3am and C was a gracious host.

Over the course of the evening, I realised that i knew SO MUCH about Sweden and Swedish law! Even though the other guests didn't have a legal background (one studied Economics at LSE and the other business at a Swedish business school) they knew a fair bit about Swedish law and we spent most of the night in lively discussion about the peculiarities and unique characteristics of Swedish law. I shared my fascination with their communitarian underpinnings, the public right of access, no duty to maintain wife after divorce, the absence of a trusts and the subsequent creation of foundations, their lack of testamentary freedom, tax evasion (their contribution, not mine!) while I'd enjoyed the Swedish law lectures and was intrigued by the material (what? no protection of negative right of association???) I didn't know how much I'd absorbed and subconsciously thought about until dinner when talking about it! Discussing the unique Nordic law model with true-blue Swedes reminded me how fortunate I am to have the opportunity to be immersed in system so different from the one I'm used to. Suddenly the otherwise dull lectures came to life and I was truly grateful for the background and foundation my introduction class gave me.

O and M, C's other guests were such gentlemen and i'm glad to have gotten to know young swedes in a social, civilised context (as opposed to being elbowed by drunk swedes in a throng outside f12). it'd be sad if i returned to singers not knowing a single 'local'. although neither O nor M are truly 'local' in a restrictive sense of the word. M's from the south and O's spent more time outside sweden than in. but happy to have met them all the same!

and, seriously, 9h dinner. no wonder C plied us with coffee after midnight :)