RATAFIA DI ALBICOCCHE

"Now mash these potatoes and pretend it's his head", said a friend of mine one evening at university, referring to a man who had hurt me. Ever since then I've liked recipes that require a bit of bashing or mashing of the ingredients [eg., olive shiacciate] so, as the apricots are plentiful and beautiful at the moment, I decided to make a ratafià from them:



First I had to bash 3 kg of apricots and about 6 of their kernels [a rolling pin did the job nicely] and put them in a large, sterilised, glass container. I added 1 litre pure alcohol [you'll have to use vodka in countries where you can't get this] plus 330 ml water. To this I added 1.5 kg sugar and a little cinnamon liqueur from this pretty miniature bottle. [I guess you could add a cinnamon stick.]



Then in went the ballon whisk to mix it all. [The sugar will dissolve further with daily shaking of the container.] Now I have to leave the mixture for 10 days or so, after which it has to be strained through muslin and left another 2 days before bottling.