Chef Alfred Portale | Greenmarket to Gotham Recipe

Chef Alfred Portale, Chef’s Recipes, Farmers Market, Union Square Green Market, Purveyors, Farmers, Produce, What To Cook, Eckerton Hill Farms, Farmers Market Ingredients, Heirloom Tomato Salad, Peach, Cucumber, Red Onion, Goat Cheese, Cerignola Olives, White Balsamic Vinaigrette

Chef Alfred Portale’s Heirloom Tomato Salad using ingredients from Eckerton Hill Farm from his Greenmarket to Gotham Recipe Journal.

Chef Alfred Portale has never needed to add the label farm-to-table when describing his food. It’s been a part of his cuisine at Gotham Bar and Grill for nearly thirty years. The restaurant is located just a few blocks from New York City’s most vibrant farmers market, the Union Square Greenmarket. Portale has shopped the farm stalls for ingredients since he took the job in the mid-80s after working in the French countryside.

This month, Portale is releasing a new cookbook called Greenmarket to Gotham Recipe Journal. He’s included 26 vegetarian recipes and vignettes about many of the farmers he has worked with over the years at the Union Square Greenmarket.

Chef Portale shares a recipe from his new book as well as suggestions for exploring the Berkshires, where he has a home. He talks about the places he loves to frequent for eating, drinking and shopping.

Heirloom Tomato Salad

with Peach, Cucumber, Red Onion, Goat Cheese, Cerignola Olives, and White Balsamic Vinaigrette

Recipe courtesy of chef Alfred Portale, Greenmarket To Gotham Recipe Journal

This classic summer offering appears every year in some form once heirloom tomato varieties have reached their full potential. The colorful plate is a distinct reminder of the debt due to visionary farmers, like Eckerton Hill Farm’s Tim Stark, for bringing back the flavorful tomato from near extinction. For us, this represents the triumph of taste over convenience that Alfred’s dedication to ingredients and a better eating environment has helped to engineer. We treat them simply so the eater gets the unadulterated best.

Yield

Serves 6 to 8

Ingredients

Salad

- 2 1/2 pounds assorted heirloom tomatoes of varying size and color

- 1/2 cup red onion, thinly julienned

- 2 to 3 large ripe peaches, pitted and sliced

- 1/4 cup Cerignola olives, pitted and sliced

- 1 large cello cucumber, peeled and quartered lengthwise, seeds removed, and cut into 1/2-inch dice

- 15 large basil leaves, chiffonade

- White balsamic vinaigrette

- Salt and freshly ground black pepper