April 24, 2021 Brunch - Bagels with Smoked White fish and Marty’s homemade gravad Lax, cream cheese, sliced onions, and Cantaloupe Afternoon snack at Brandywine junxion restaurant Dinner - Mongolian Hot Pot
We slept in this morning and did not eat brunch until 11:30. We ate Bagels with Smoked White fish and Marty’s homemade gravad Lax, cream cheese, sliced onions, and Cantaloupe . It was very traditional and very delicious.
Then we showered and dressed and at 1:00 Marty drove us on a tour of the area ending at the Delaware Art Museum, where they were members.
The Museum is a very modern building. There were only four of six galleries open but three of those four were amazing. The first exhibited Early American art, such as a life portrait of George Washington by one of the Peele’s.
We then walked down and turned into a gallery with the largest collection of works by John Sloan in the world, plus several of the other seven Ashcan artists, such as Luks, Robert Henri, Glakens, and Bellows.
I was amazed. Here are several of the paintings.
We then went upstairs and entered a three gallery complex with the largest collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings in the U.S. I started taking pictures and could not stop. I had never seen so many amazing Pre-Raphaelite paintings in my life in one place. Many were paintings I have studied in Art History classes. Here are some of them.
After that we walked through a pan American Modernism gallery with a good Hopper and a cactus flower by Georgia O’Keefe and several paintings by members of the Wyeth family including a Henrietta Wyeth painting.
We walked outside to through the sculpture garden to the parking lot to the car and continued our driving tour of Delaware and the Chadds Ford and Brandywine area. We stopped a Restaurant named Junxion at around near Kenneth Square and Brandywine for a bowl of mushroom soup.
We found out that the restaurant had changed hands and they were out of mushroom soup. But we soon found out that the new owner’s boys harvested ramps or a form of wild garlic that grows in the area in the spring. I is milder than the more pungent relatives we typically encounter and there were several items on the menu with ramps. We ordered two slices of ramp quiche with salads, a cup of chai, and a bowl of minestrone.
We went on and on about ramps with the owner chef. Soon he brought us soft butter mixed with chopped ramps and a sautéed ramp and we bought what was left of the ramps in a box by the front door.
The soup was really good minestrone and the quiche were superb, although I am not sure I agree with his strategy regarding adding corn meal to eggs to give them body.
. The Ramp butter
We then drove by the Wyeth Museum and along Brandywine creek, stopping at a fruit and vegetable stand where we bought a container of buttera and a jar of Blackberry fig jam.
We drove by the Montchain Resort and Crazy Cat restaurant where we stayed and ate ramps and fiddlehead ferns fifteen years ago when we visited Winterthur.
We then drove back to the house and we sipped Zavala XO rum and 23 year old rum while Yoyo
Yoyo prepared a Mongolian hot pot dinner for us.
It featured a large metal pot divided in two by a partition in the middle and a multitude of meats and vegetables. The assortment included, lobster and fish balls, Chinese spinach, tofu, thinly sliced lamb, Napa cabbage, oyster mushrooms, Manila clams, shrimp, squid rings fresh cabbage leaves, and yellow squash. There were also bowls of fresh chopped green onions, cilantro, fresh garlic, and a bowl of a specially prepared sesame and peanut paste.
On both sides of the hot pot Yoyo added a mixture of chicken stock and water and on one side she added a chili spice mixture for hot pots.
Yoyo heated the broth to a boil on the stove an then put it on a butane brazier in the middle of the table.
She then started placing spoonfuls of the various ingredients in the boiling broth on both sides of the pot and then onto our napkin covered bowls beside our plates filled with a mixture of sesame and peanut sauce, fresh chopped cilantro, green onion, and garlic.
We drank beers to wash down the massive amounts of boiled meats and vegetables. I loved the homemade mini fish cakes and Chinese spinach. Some items were more flavorful when cooked in the red chili flavored broth, such as cabbage leaves and lobster balls.
After about twenty minutes we were all filled to the Max.
The girls retired and Marty and I stayed up and National 12:30 talking and sipping Calvados and Zapada 23 year old rum.
This was the first time we have eaten an official Mongolian hot pot made for us by a real Mongolian and it was an impressive experience.
The thing I noticed is that the broth cooked foods did not weigh heavily on one’s stomach and I felt better the next morning than after a stir fried Chinese meal.
Bon Appetit
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