Proud in the Kitchen: Macy's Big Day Out

It's Pride weekend in San Francisco, and Macy's put on a special cooking demonstration yesterday at its Union Square store, gathering some of the best gay and lesbian chefs in the city. It was an interesting hour of cooking demonstrations, with the chefs sharing fancy recipes for a perfect Pride brunch.

Jennifer Biesty of Scala's Bistro is probably best remembered as a cheftestant on BRAVO's "Top Chef." She was cooking with the restaurant's pastry chef, Tim Nugent, and together they made a seared ahi tuna dish on a slice of toasted ciabatta. Kind of fancy for brunch, but still really delicious just the same.

You can tell this is a fancy restaurant dish because of all the ingredients. There were ahi tuna encrusted with piment d'espelette and then topped with heirloom cherry tomatoes, chervil, French breakfast radish, olive tapanade, aioli and a quail egg. Try making that for brunch!

The second pair of chefs were Janine Falvo of Carneros Bistro & Wine Bar in Sonoma and Adam Jones of Market Street Grill. They made what they called a "Blinged Out Eggs Benedict" that included butter poached halibut, asparagus, and loster-white truffle hollandaise sauce. Above, they're making the biscuit for the eggs benedict.

The plate, when done, looks like a meal for two. This could serve several go-go boys on Pride day, that's for sure.

The final demonstration was dessert from Yigit Pura, who once cooked for Daniel Boulud in New York. Now he's the chef at a San Francisco catering company called Taste Catering. Not only does he make sweets, but Chef Pura's major eye candy, dontcha think?

He made these strawberry parfaits with buttermilk panna cotta. The samples they passed out tasted amazing. This kind of look perfect for the July 4th weekend coming up, right? I would include the recipe, but it's more than four pages long! Maybe you should just have Pura cater this for you.

Happy Pride Day!

Previous cooking demos
Charcuterie Guy: Taylor Boetticher
Creating Elegant Vegetarian Dishes
Cooking Demo by Joyce Goldstein