Brooklyn Non Dirt Talk

Brooklyn Non Dirt Talk: Growing without dirt
Urban greenscaping with particular emphasis on helping city dwellers to grow some of their own fresh food using modern user-friendly methods with innovator Bob Hyland and hydroponics for sustainable agriculture with Gwen Hill.

Tuesday May 15th, 2012
7:30 - 9:30 pm
Downstairs @ Sycamore Bar and Flowershop, 21+
1118 Cortelyou RD, BK (Q train to Cortelyou)
Hosted by Meera Bhat

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Bob Hyland is an urban greenscaping professional with almost 40 years of experience since his days running a leading interior plantscaping company in Los Angeles. He was a national industry organization speaker, writer and educator during those years.

This is what Interiorscape, the leading industry trade magazine, had to say in the Nov-Dec 1983 issue.
“Bob is truly an advanced thinker in our industry. We can think of no other individual who is more familiar and tuned in to advanced technology for interiorscapes.” “Surely, when the history is written of our still evolving industry, Bob will be recognized as the interiorscaper that modernized the industry with irrigation technology, and for that we will owe him a debt.”

Hyland has been blogging for the past eight years. Inside Urban Green, his internationally known blog, focuses on urban greenscaping with particular emphasis on helping city dwellers to grow some of their own fresh food using modern user-friendly methods. These highly productive systems are particularly suitable for nomadic urban lifestyles and do not require tillable land.
www.insideurbangreen.org/

Gwen Hill is an urban farmer, garden educator and local food lover based in Brooklyn, NY.  She is a team member at Prospect Farm, and leads a gardening program at the Harbor School, a public high school on Governors Island.  She worked as the director of education and greenhouse manager at the Science Barge, a sustainable hydroponic urban farm and environmental education center in Yonkers for two years.  She holds a bachelors degree in Environmental Studies and is completing her MA in Geography at Hunter College, for which she is studying the diversity of NYCs urban agriculture movement.

Meera Bhat is part of the team at Prospect Farm (http://prospectfarm.org), a neighborhood growing initiative in Windsor Terrace that is working together to grow food in a formerly vacant lot.  She lives in Prospect Park South and works as a project manager at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University.  She also leads a girl scout troop, if youre looking for cookies.

Cantaloupe Alone is the creator of this event and a food blog for people with garlic breath run by Kensington, Brooklyn based Naomi Donabedian www.cantaloupealone.com

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Onion Focaccia

Onions and yeast, ah the smell of it makes me drooly

Onions and wheat never go out of season (really just have a long shelf life) nor do they go out of style. In the dead of winter a hot loaf of bread is a breath of fresh air. Focaccia is a non-bakers friend. Its just pizza dough with extra oil. You dont have to knead if you have a food processor, and I suggest having a food processor. The other nice thing about this recipe is that the dough gets better the longer you let it sit in the fridge. Which means you can make mulitple batches of the dough in advance and bake it up in a snap without much effort. Its alittle richer than your average pizza dough recipe, but dont let that stop you from making pizzas with it.

Onion Focaccia

5 cups flour
.25 oz (or 2.5 tsp) active dry yeast
2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp honey
1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup oil
1 3/4 cup warm water

4 onions
1 tsp olive oil, more for drizzeling
red pepper flakes to taste
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tblsp medium ground corn meal
salt for sprinkling

Pulse 5 cups of flour, yeast, and salt to combine in the bowl of a food processor. Mix water, oil, honey, and vinegar together. Start the food processor and add the liquids in a steady stream. Dough will clump together and bang against the bowl once all the liquids are added. Keep processing for about 45 seconds. Sometimes my food processor starts to burn out (I can smell the motor) and I give it a minute break. The dough will be sticky. Scrape it directly into a sealable container. Let sit overnight in the fridge and up to 5 days. After 5 days you can freeze the dough for up to 6 months until you are ready to use it.

Sticky dough

Chop onion into 1/8 inch thick half moons. Now is when you really get to exert your power over food. Chop and cook those onions into tasty savory caramelized oblivion. Its best to use a thick bottomed pan so you can slowly brown them rather than burning them. Onions have a lot of sugar, and do burn if you dont watch out.

From this

To that

Add the onions, with 1 tsp of olive oil, a sprinkle of salt and red pepper flakes to a heavy bottomed pot over medium heat. Stir to coat the onions. Cook over medium until transparent. Add the vinegar scraping bottom to pick up an browned bits. reduce heat to medium low and cook for about 30-40 more minutes until deep caramel color forms. The longer the better. The volume will greatly reduce but the flavor will get bigger. Stir often. Onions can be made 2 days in advance and kept chilled.

Dough after 3 days in the fridge is loose and bubbly

Ready to bake? Get ready to fill the house with awesome scent of onion and yeast. Grease an 11x17 rimmed baking sheet (Im using my trusty jelly roll pan) and sprinkle with corn meal. Not just any corn meal, you need to get medium/coarse corn meal. Medium corn meal also doubles as polenta in my home, and could even be passed off as grits. Im no grits expert, but I think it does fine.

Corny meal, look for medium ground

Drop the chilled focaccia dough onto the baking sheet. Stretch it with your hands into a rectangle about 1/2 inch thick, nearly the size of the pan. Make indentations with your fingers. These will be little wells for the oil to collect in.

Sprinkle with a little oil and rub to cover. Next spread the caramelized onions over the dough. No for the part that separates pizza from focaccia drizzle the dough with olive oil until well coated and pooling in areas. Finish with a sprinkle of sea salt. Let sit in a draft free area for 60 minutes to warm up the dough and allow it to get puffy. Meanwhile preheat oven to 450 degrees. Bake for 20-25 minutes light browned. You will know by the smell when its almost there. Its the best smell on earth. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack. Slice and serve. Great a great snack for munching on while drinking beer. I made mine for super bowl. The focaccia didnt make it to the 2nd quarter.

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