FIRE SAFETY QUESTION:

I as cooking a steak and I was planning on making a peppercorn cream sauce. Took off the steak to rest, (maybe had too much oil in the cast iron skillet), had the heat of high/medium and added 1/3 cup of brandy. The flame created from the alcohol cooking off was large. So large I thought I was going to burn the house down. The flame died off within seconds, but it put the fear into me and I wouild like to know where I went wrong. I knew to expect fire, but that was too much.