Jacqueline Friedrich: The Wine Humanist WINE BY PEOPLE, FOR PEOPLE; WINE FROM THE HEART

Writing Loire2 and dealing with the abundant harvest in my garden has taken up all of my time recently. That and dentist appointments. Now the tumult of the garden is dying down. It’s basically just walnuts and apples now and the last of the cherry tomatoes and some green tomatoes that I’ve already given up on.
So I’m trying to deal with the bounty that I’d already gathered and that was sitting there in cartons, making me feel guilty while the fruit, itself, quickly and was surely deteriorating.
The future plum brandy is fermenting. Last Sunday I made peach jam. Today I made peach ratafia today and a number of mini-disasters arrived, trying to use up those quickly rotting but initially so-delicious-I-can-no-longer-buy-peaches-in-the-market peaches.
I was using a recipe from Helen Witty’s “Fancy Pantry.” First, I peeled the peaches with a knife, thus managing to savage bits of very ripe peach from very blemished pieces of fruit.
Then the recipe called for cooking the sugar with water and letting it boil for 3 minutes, then letting it cool before adding the brandy.
While the sugar mixture was cooling, I set about removing the kernels from the pits of the peaches. Or trying to. I had never done this before.
I got a hammer and a cutting board and set a peach pit down on it and smacked it. Nothing. This went on for a good bit of time with no better results. I tried a nutcracker. Nyet.
Then I got the brilliant idea to take the hammer and the peach pits outside and smash them on the cement paving (fashioned to look like artisanal tiles). This did work though a number of pits jetted into the garden and quite a few kernels were damaged. Still, I got my kernels, whole or not.

I went inside to test the sugar mixture. It was still hot. So I waited, not even a minute, before testing it again. I looked in the pan and saw a solid sheet of caramel-colored, what?, caramel? Petrified sugar?
I should have thought to add more water and bring the mixture to the boil again but I wasn't thinking. Instead, I just plowed ahead and added most of the brandy with the hopes that stirring would loosen the mass.

It didn’t. So then I got an even stupider idea. I decided to heat it up a bit. Of course, this did loosen the sugar but it also set the brandy aflame. And as there was quite a bit of brandy, with a high % of alcohol, the fire was not about to go out quickly. (The brandy was marc from Charles Joguet’s Dioterie vineyard in Chinon, back in the day when Charles was still there.)

I finally got the bright idea to add the flaming brandy to the peaches and their kernels. This did work.

But I'm wondering if the ratafia is now safe from botulism and other dangers. I figure the original amount of brandy would kill off any chance of botulism. But since I burned off a good amount of that alcohol, I don't know if enough is left. I did add the one cup of brandy I hadn't 'flamed' to the mix afterwards.

For reasons beyond my ken, I am paranoid about botulism. So now I’m worried that the percentage of alcohol isn’t high enough. I’ve sent urgent emails to two chef friends hoping they can help me out.

If you have any ideas, I’d be happy to hear them.