My cousin Massimo has been spending the last 2-3 years doing an MFA at the prestigious San Francisco Art Institute, and Saturday marked his graduation and the affixing of the title Master to his name. We are so excited for him, and got to go out twice to see his show on Treasure Island. And we were also very excited to host him, Meagan, his parents and her parents and a friend from LA for dinner after the graduation ceremonies.

We weren’t quite sure the number of folks until the last minute so I decided to cook up a big turkey that I’ve had a few months since the last bulk delivery day from Marin Sun Farms to our site. I brined it for a day in a simple 50:50 kosher salt / sugar mix, then dried it and rubbed in a spice rub with a bunch of differ spice I heated on the stove and ground up. I think there was coriander, cumin, mustard seed in there, then I added some garlic powder and some tumeric too. I cooked it for about 3 hours  (I think it was about 15-18 pounds) on indirect heat on the BBQ.

I had to restock the coals a couple times which was fine, but the indirectness allowed for a safely unburned skin that got super brown-ish red and crispy. Looks pretty good, no?

I also didn’t want to make anything that had to be served and eaten quickly, as I just wasn’t sure of the timing, so I pulled out some bacon (panchetta from Bocalone, actually) and got it crispy-ish, then added some shallots and 4 big bunches of collard greens.

They cooked down and then I just left them on a gentle low heat until serving. Oh, I might have slapped in some extra bacon fat. Com’on, collard greens just go with bacon fat!

I had soaked up some white beans the night before and got them cooking in some light chicken stock

Then I sauteed up a bunch of shallots, sweated them down, added tons of garlic, and then threw in that bowl of greens you see there in the picture.

After the greens were cooked down a bit, the beans got added and the flavours allowed to come together. Then it was final seasoning time – more-salt-than-you-think-is-healthy, pepper, hot pepper flakes, olive oil, and then the secret which is white wine vinegar. Lots of it too. The beans are so rich and starchy that they need tons of salt, but they also need acid. I guess you could use citrus of some sort, but for my palate the white wine vinegar worked well.

Then I made my “famous” asian style coleslaw, and laid it all out on the table. I say “famous” cuz no matter what crazy seemingly difficult dish I have prepared as part of a dinner, the dish that always gets the most comments when I serve it is the asian coleslaw, and it’s the easiest dish to make! Just thinly slice up some red and green cabbage, add in an onion and/or some fennel bulb, squeeze in some lemon, add some soy sauce (in lieu of salt), some mayo (homemade preferred) and then most importantly some toasted sesame oil. Simple and oh so tasty …

We had a great time with everyone, and we all took turns quizzing Massimo on obscure art questions to check if he earned the Master label. Don’t worry, he passed all tests!