Peach Ratafia; There's Still Time

I didn’t make noyau this year — but when Jane Lear broke out a vice and a quart of brandy, she reminded me that it’s not too late to get a batch ready by Thanksgiving.

Still Life: Jane Lear's Recursive Ratafia

Lear is the features director at Martha Stewart Living, was an editor at Gourmet before the magazine folded, and has a stack of cookbooks to her name. Recently, she emailed about peach ratafia, thus confirmed a long-held belief that a note from Jane is a reason to smile. The recipe she’d followed, from Helen Witty’s book Fancy Pantry, is close enough to the ratafia aux noyau recipe we make (usually) around here that they can be used interchangeably in cocktails, aperitifs, and baking.

In her post Obsession: Peach Ratafia, she makes a distinction between familiar wine-based ratafias and those based on brandy:

The peach ratafia I’m talking about is different. Based on brandy and peach pits (for color and an almondy flavor), it has more in common with the ratafias of the Georgian and Regency eras, which today have their own Facebook pages. I would kill to have a conversation with Jane Austen or Georgette Heyer about that fact.  

But instead I turned to Gerald Asher, Gourmet’s wine editor for 30 years and the author, most recently, of A Vineyard in My Glass, for context. ”Ratafia was originally the unfermented sweet grape juice preserved and stopped from fermenting by adding brandy,” he explained. That brandy, he noted, was usually young, fiery stuff, not aged Cognac. “The French—women, mostly—drank a small glass of ratafia as an aperitif, in the same way the French drink a small glass of ruby port, or concoctions like Lillet or Dubonnet.” 

Fortunately, noyau can be made year-round, even with out of season peaches, since its defining marzipan and almond tastes are derived from kernels within the peach pits. Lear’s peach ratafia, however, calls for fresh peach slices in addition to cracked pits from those fruits.

Now that our days are growing shorter, decent peaches are becoming scarce, but if you can lay your hands on some, try her version. The advantage of Lear's approach over mine? Her's yields a batch of brandied peaches as well as the cordial. Not, it should be noted, a horrible thing.

Bookshelf: The River Cottage Preserves Handbook

Ten Speed Press has released an American edition of Pam Corbin’s The River Cottage Preserves Handbook. For five days, it barely left my side.

I toted it in my briefcase and in my backpack. I brought it out at coffee shops and flipped through it before bed. A handbook in the truest sense, the small book fits in my (admittedly oversized) hands, but contains a wealth of information about pickling, candying, putting up, and otherwise preserving ephemeral produce. Although not a bartenders’ guide by any means, its sensibilities about capturing seasonality in glass speak volumes to modern cocktail enthusiasts.

Originally a British title, the current incarnation has a few odd moments with measurements — as do most European cookbooks adapted to the American market. Understand that "1.1 pounds" of an ingredient was originally "half a kilo" and the recipe flows more easily. Measuring that pesky 0.1 pound exactly then becomes slightly less imperative.

The Handbook contains the usual recipes one finds scattered throughout other books on preserves. It has, for instance, recipes for fruit butters, for chutneys, herbal vinegars, marmalades, jellies, jams, and pickles of various sorts. For those who just can’t keep booze out of the kitchen, there are syrups, sloe gin, elderflower cordial, sage elixir, and a rummy shrubb or two.

Clearly, Corbin knows her subject well and has brought together dozens that would otherwise take some research to unearth. Many show an experimental stamp on otherwise venerable recipes with plenty of riffs on basic ideas. With a solid discussion of what makes good preserves and how to stave off spoilage, it’s a book I’d recommend to beginners as well as advanced preservers. As Fearnley-Whittingstall puts it in the introduction, “…she will show you the ropes and then give you the reins.”

The book’s recipes evoke homey and comforting memories of foods that perhaps we’ve never even eaten, but wish we had, all infused with Corbin’s pragmatic take on making the most of one can — there’s even a Compost Heap Jelly recipe, using up apple scraps and citrus skins. Oh, hush; it’s little more than a strained marmalade. Like many River Cottage recipes, however, it does make one pause to think about untapped potential for eating well.

For the first time in years of living in Southern California’s nearly eternal Spring, I found myself wistfully musing over seasons, almost – but not quite – missing the changing of leaves, the onset of cooler nights, and Winters huddled inside, bundled up against the cold, with a pot of tea and jars of my own lemon curd and jams to remind me of the Summer that had past and which will yet come again.

Of course, my senses returned to me and I’m reminded that we do not “enjoy” distinct seasons as other parts of the world. I don’t have to draw close the shutters and light a fire to enjoy a pot of tea and my own lemon curd, nor is it necessary where we live to put up foods as talismans against a harsh, barren Winter. But I do it anyway. Making my own preserves, my own chutneys, marmalades, and jams somehow does allow me to feel as if I am laying in protection against hard times. Even if everything else goes South, I seem to think to myself, we will never go hungry. As God it is my witness and all that.

In a less reflective moment, I admit that I just like the taste of my own preserves. Inspired by the book, I have indeed made, among other things, new batches of lemon curd. Last week, four pounds of blueberries transformed into two sheets of fruit leathers. Following Corbin’s general instructions, it was simplicity itself.

The European beech (Fagus sylvatica) is a separate species from the North American F. grandifolia. Haven’t tried a drink made from either, but Corbin offers a take on an old French cordial I’ve written about before.

Beech Leaf Noyau

One loosely packed grocery bag full of soft young beech leads, sufficient to pack tightly into a 2 ½ to 3-cup jar
2 cups gin
1 ½ cups granulated sugar
Brandy


Pack beech leaves into an earthenware or glass jar until it’s about nine-tenths full. Pour the gin over the leaves, making sure they are well covered (they will oxidize and turn brown if exposed). Let steep for 7-10 days so the leaves can release their striking green pigment. Strain the infused June through cheesecloth or a jelly strainer bag.


Put the sugar and 1 cup of water into a saucepan and heat gently to dissolve the sugar. Allow to cool completely or adding to the infused gin. Add a couple of capfuls of brandy too.


Put a couple of fresh beech leaves into a sterilized screw-top or stoppered bottle, then add the noyau and seal.


Wait for a cold winter night, then partake of this potent liqueur. Use within years (it may darken in color over time).

Pam Corbin (2010 American edition)
Introduction by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
The River Cottage Preserves Handbook
216 pages, hardback
Ten Speed Press
ISBN: 9781580081726
$22.00

Goes well with: 

• Brandy, Smokes, and the Queen of Jam, a bit I wrote about, among other things, Mes Confitures, a French recipe book on preserves by Christine Ferber.  
• Lucy Norris' Pickled: Vegetables, Fruits, Roots, More — Preserving a World of Tastes and Tradition. 

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Noyau Rising: The Miss Suzy Cocktail

Squirrel Sours call for a base spirit,
lemon or lime juice,
and crème de noyau or another nut-flavored liqueur.

~ Gary Regan
The Joy of Mixology

Squirrels have been scampering about the attic of my mind. Red ones, gnawing the wiring and chattering away when work should be claiming most my concentration. My savior, come to evict them, is a single bush-tailed rodent from my childhood. The apron-clad Miss Suzy, from Miriam Young’s 1964 children’s book of the same name, has inspired a stiff adult beverage laced with a seductive cordial made of sugar, brandy, and otherwise throw-away peach pits.

In Young’s book, Miss Suzy, the homey squirrel so skilled in the domestic arts, cooks and cleans in her tree house, enjoying the starry skies. Short version: A band of bad red squirrels runs her out and trashes the place. She bivouacs in a dollhouse within a nearby attic where, while cleaning, she finds a box of toy soldiers. The soldiers, smitten by her and outraged at the bastard red squirrels, muster arms and chase off the interlopers. Miss Suzy moves back to her old digs and her starry skies.

As a child, I adored the story. Like my nephew after me, I loved reenacting the part of the red squirrels (one gets to throw—if not actually break—things). I’d largely forgotten it, however, until I concocted a batch of homemade crème de noyau…and orange bitters kingpin Gary Regan lurched into the picture.

In The Joy of Mixology (2003), Regan offers a typology of alcoholic drinks, categorizing them by easy-to-remember components. Regan posits a new class based on nut liqueurs, most notably Hiram Walker’s luridly red crème de noyaux, a liqueur used most famously in a saccharine little tonsil varnish named a Pink Squirrel.

My noyau is not red. It’s a light amber that—from the looks of it—could pass for honey syrup. Ah, but smell: an immediate aroma of marzipan spiked with notes of peach and vanilla. Regan would call this a New Jersey Squirrel. I classed it up a bit by ditching the red and giving it a less industrial flavor. While the noyau tantalizingly hits sweet notes of...something else...in the drink, it remains solidly an applejack sour.

Miss Suzy Cocktail

2 oz Laird’s 100-proof Apple Brandy
1 oz homemade crème de noyau
1 oz fresh lemon juice

Shake with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish, if desired, with a single brandied cherry and a sink of brandied cherry syrup.

An uncomplicated cocktail going into regular rotation over at the Forge.

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If I Had a Hammer: Ratafia aux Noyau Just in Time for Christmas

God bless Michael McGuan.

McGuan, our neighborhood wurstmacher at the San Diego restaurant The Linkery, emailed not long ago to say that he had collected a container full of peach pits for me. Unfurl that brow—this is hardly on par with saving last week’s Penny Saver or a clutch of candy bar wrappers. This was an actual favor, something that would have taken me a whole season of snarfing down cobblers, pies, crumbles, grunts, slumps, betties, smoothies, ice cream, and sangria. On a restaurant scale, however, such a collection of peach pits doesn’t take nearly as long. And, as they were destined for my house, they were wed with alcohol once they got here. Naturally.

Peach pits, also called stones and bunkers, have more value than might seem obvious at first blush. In a variety of forms—charred, split, still adhering to fruit flesh, fresh, dried, etc—they have long been added to moonshine, brandy, whiskey, and other distillates for the amber color and peachy-almond flavor they can impart.

Even more appealing are the kernels once those pits are cracked open. Peach kernels (noyaux in French) taste and even look a bit like small almonds. The smell strongly suggests both almond extract and fresh marzipan. That almond taste is readily surrendered to alcoholic solvents for a cordial with a decidedly old-fashioned taste of almonds and vanilla. Recipes for noyau, ratafia aux noyau, and crème de noyaux abound in older American household account books, recipe books, and homemade beverage collections where they almost always go by the French name. One still finds them in contemporary French cookbooks.

So, let’s make a batch!

Oh. Wait. Forgot something. Peach kernels, along with those of apricots, plums, cherries, and other members of the extensive family Rosacea, contain cyanogenic glycosides. Big whoop, you say, I need a drink, Pops, not a chemistry lesson. I hear you. Lord knows I’m not an environmental chemist, but those who know about such things say that on ingestion, these glycosides break down into prussic acid, also known as hydrogen cyanide (HCN), a substance listed under Schedule 3 of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Right there, smack dab on your bar cart.

You might recognize hydrogen cyanide as the primary component of the German gas chamber extermination agent Zyklon B. So, no fooling, crème de noyaux carries an element of danger.

Now, do you want to make a batch? I do. In small doses, noyaux does not seem to have ill effect—New Orleans Creoles have reputations for many things, but regularly keeling over from cyanide poisoning with a cocktail glass in hand is not among them. As Erik Ellestad writes over at Underhill Lounge in regard to apricot kernels, “Please take anything I say here as simply conclusions and choices I have drawn for myself. Make your own choices and draw your own conclusions.” I couldn’t agree more.

From the 4th edition of Picayune’s Creole Cook Book (1910), here’s the original recipe and proportions for this old New Orleans classic:

Peach Kernel Ratafia
Ratafia aux Noyau de Peches ou d’Abricots
¼ pound each of peach or apricot kernels
4 pints of brandy
2 ½ pounds of sugar
2 pints of water

Pound the peach or apricot kernels – some also pound peach stones – steep them for one whole month in four pints of brandy in an earthen jar, and at the end of that time add a syrup made of two and a half pounds of sugar and 2 pints of water. Mix all well together, and then filter as directed above [sic: below], and bottle and seal, and keep in a cool, shady place.

Ratafia aux Noyau is one of the standing Creole drinks, that is most agreeable, the taste being of a delicate vanilla and almonds combined.

A note on procedure: Peach pits are hard and cracking them takes some force. I use a hammer and rap the bunkers firmly on concrete outside until they split in half, then just pry out the kernels. Hammer the pits on a cutting board and you'll just deboss their images into the wood. I heard someone might have done that one time. If you like, put them in a towel before hitting to contain any flying bits, but controlled smacking should prevent peach shrapnel.

I cut the recipe in half (not for lack of brandy, but for the limited amount of kernels) and am macerating the crushed kernels and half their stones cracked and crushed into small bits in a brandy bottle. Come December, I'll add the syrup, let it mellow bit and see what we get. Here's hoping I don't take a big dirt nap...

Also from the same edition of Picayune’s Creole Cook Book:

How to Filter Cordials and Ratafias.

The filtering is of the utmost importance. A good home-made filter may be improvised by fitting pieces of felt into a funnel, very closely. Some use flannel, but the felt is far better. Filtering paper is sold by all druggists. Put the funnel in the mouth of the bottle, fit in the paper, pour in the mixture and let it filter slowly. Again, others use the ordinary brown or white paper, but this allows the aroma to evaporate, and the taste of the paper clings to the cordial. If you wish the cordial to be very transparent, take very dry, clear, transparent isinglass, and cut it very, very thin. Then dissolve it with white wine until it is perfectly liquid. Put it into bottles and preserve for use. When needed, coat the inside of the strainer with this, using a light brush or sponge. It will form a glue around the funnel. Pour the cordial or liqueur through this, straining several times, again and again, until it becomes perfectly transparent. Strain it the last time into bottles, and seal very tight. You will then have a clear, limpid cordial or liqueur that will not have lost its aroma by evaporation.

This simple method may be understood by even a child, and homemade cordials are not only very delightful, but far less expensive than the imported ones. Always have the Cognac as old as possible.

Goes well with:

• Erik Ellestad’s discussion of apricot kernels for his orgeat.
• Kenneth Barbalace’s Chemical Database entry on hydrogen cyanide.
• Wikipedia's description of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction
• Isinglass, called for in the filtering procedure above, is made of fish bladders and is widely available in homebrew stores since it's sometimes used by home brewers as a clearing agent for beers and wine.

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