Since pressing his first crop of sunflower seeds into oil in 2012, Clay Oliver has carved a name in the boutique culinary oils industry for his centennial family farm in Pitts. Some nine years later, the award-winning Oliver Farm oil line also includes pecan, peanut and green peanut, benne seed and okra seed, along with infused varieties.
But, separating the oil from seeds and nuts left him with a mealy byproduct that the frugal-minded entrepreneur didn’t want to see go to waste. He pondered turning it into animal feed, but “the value isn’t there,” he said. He tried eating it dry, thinking he perhaps could sell it as “hippie cereal.” Then, he experimented with flour, burning the motor out of two or three food processors before investing in a flour mill.
I only recently discovered Oliver’s portfolio of peanut, pecan, benne, okra and green-hued pumpkin seed flours, but a few chefs have been cooking and baking with them for some time — sold on the uniqueness of these gluten-free Georgia products, and, in some cases, the ease of substitution with other flours.
Staplehouse chef de cuisine Jake Pollitz has been working with Oliver’s products since the restaurant’s debut in the fall of 2015. During Staplehouse’s days as a fine-dining destination, the kitchen got creative with the flours, using benne seed flour to make oyster crackers and pecan flour to make dumplings. “Once upon a time, we did a potato dish centered around peanuts and potatoes: potatoes poached in green peanut oil, dredged in a mixture of charred peanut shells and peanut flour, and fried so it had this wild shell outside of it,” Pollitz recalled. “We did all sorts of crazy stuff like that.”
Pollitz enjoys working with unique products, like those from Oliver, because “it just opens the door for creativity,” he said. In addition, using a gluten-free flour was part of a strategy to design menu items suitable for most diets. “Especially when we were doing the tasting menu, there were so many dietary restrictions we had to work with on any given night.”
Chef-owner Nick Leahy has been experimenting with Oliver Farm flours at Nick’s Westside. A biscotti made with benne seed flour is now a standard gift given to guests on their birthday. More recently, Leahy has been perfecting a pecan sponge cake, as well as a pecan tart, both of which incorporate Oliver’s pecan flour, and he hopes to get them on the menu this month.
Leahy keeps the pantry at Nick’s stocked with Oliver’s flours. “It is really cool that it is a gluten-free option from Georgia. It fits our ethos and customer needs. And, Clay is a really inspirational dude,” he said, commending the farmer’s “passion for sustainability.”
Credit: C. W. Cameron
Credit: C. W. Cameron
In the coming weeks, Rocket Farm restaurants group pastry director Chrysta Poulos will be spotlighting Oliver’s pecan flour and oil in a pecan cake at King & Duke. Because she worked off a recipe that originally called for almond flour, she figured she’d have to make some adjustments. That wasn’t the case. “It was an equal exchange for almond flour, which was super easy. And, the flavor from the pecans really comes through,” she said.
She also likes the flour’s superfine texture, which resulted in a “nice and fluffy” — and gluten-free — cake.
Credit: handout
Credit: handout
Claudia Martinez sifted Oliver Farm flours into gluten-free sweets at Tiny Lou’s. Now that she’s one month into her pastry gig at Miller Union, she’s adjusting her approach to fit the restaurant’s sustainability ethos, with chef and co-owner Steven Satterfield as its standard bearer.
“It’s kind of slowed down my way of pastry. When (Satterfield) purchases something, he’s supporting local. I am learning to use fresh fruit from farmers; when processing it, not wasting anything. It has been cool to be inspired to work with stuff he is getting.”
One of her projects is a strawberry tart with a pecan sable dough that she anticipates could land as a special later this month. “When you bite into local Georgia strawberries, the cream, everything we are getting — it changes the way I am thinking, to take the time to create a menu that supports farmers.”
Home cooks also can find creative inspiration from Oliver Farm flours. I dredged fresh asparagus in Oliver’s okra flour, seasoned with Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning, and crisped that up in a frying pan, with tasty results. I’ll do the same to okra when that season arrives, and maybe even use the okra flour in a roux for gumbo, like Satterfield suggested.
Heeding advice from Poulos and Martinez about baking with a nut flour like pecan, I incorporated it into a sweet potato-pecan quick bread that also used Oliver Farm pecan oil.
In the meantime, I’m keen to try cutting the pecan flour in with cornmeal for johnnycakes, like Linton Hopkins is wont to do. And, I want to work that same flour into pasta, like chef Jamie Adams did for a pappardelle special at Il Giallo in Sandy Springs.
There are plenty of recipes that come from the source itself. On the Oliver Farm website, you’ll find tried-and-true favorites, like peanut flour cookies, pumpkin flour cookies and pecan flour brownies. “They are easy to make,” Oliver said. “My young’uns help us make them.”
As for Oliver, he steers toward the savory side: “I’m fond of cubed deer steak with peanut flour.”
Just dredge it and fry it right up. No recipe needed.
For a listing of where you can purchase Oliver Farm’s flours, go to oliverfarm.com.
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