A grand night in oldtown Ystad

I recently did a very nice menu for a party on oldtown Ystad, hosted by Ray Rau and his lovely wife Maria. Ray is American and has been in Sweden 20+ years. His children, from teenager to mid 20's, are a wonderful blend of Swedish and American cultures, switching from perfect English to perfect Swedish in mid-sentence. They recently moved down from Stockholm and bought one of those fabulous old houses in the centrum. Now in Ystad the churches date back to the 1200's and most of the old houses are from the 1500's, and Ale's Stones, not far away goes back to 600AD. Anyway, Ray & Maria have a absolutely gorgeous home, 3 floors of 4 meter ceilings, like stepping into a museum, but with a comfortable and personal touch. The house sits at the end of a street, next to a park with people strolling. I had come in contact with them through 'Democrats Abroad, Skane Chapter' and Ray was turning 50, and he is quite a excellent cook and was planning on doing the party himself but the guest list had

swelled to 30, and he brought me in to take over. We had talked earlier about some cooking lessons, but in the end I recommended buying 'The Professional Chef', a textbook from The Culinary Institute of America to study and practice the techniques and we could talk later. Since then I have been inspired to start doing instructional cooking videos and posting them on my blog & youtube. For the menu, we started  with a gratin of tiger prawns and scallops, on the spinach florentine, this has become one of my signature dishes, and as always, the dish is so impressive served with a crisp white wine. Next we had the seared yellow fin tuna with a five peppercorn crust...smoked & burnt on the outside, raw in the center, served with a spicy mango salsa and the super-fine sweet cream polenta. This dish is always a crowd pleaser! After we cleansed the palette with a cactus sorbet, we went to lamb chops with a herb crust, seared & roasted medium rare, they were cooked to perfection! I served them with a Perigueux sauce, pomme dauphine potatoes, veggies and baby greens with truffle oil. For dessert, I served the 'Moelleux au Chocolat', thats a heavy dark chocolate soufflé, filled with dark chocolate ganache that melts while it's baking and it's served warm so the warm melted ganache runs out of the middle of the cake. I served it with two sauces, a raspberry coulis & a white chocolate sauce. We brought in two professional waiters to serve, everything went flawlessly, the menu and the party were a great success! Often with parties in Sweden they have printed song sheets and sing songs between courses, give speeches, do a roast on the guest of honor, or just toast & drink lots of schnapps. At one point in between courses I looked up and saw a professional classical violinist giving a solo performance from the corner of the room. So Ray Rau turned 50 with style, it was definitely a grand night to remember!