After the fruit was cut into pieces, Rex and I dropped the fruits into the pots and covered the lids. We turned on all four burners at the same time, and I leaned forward a little bit to center each pot perfectly over the fires.

"Now, we wait until the water starts simmering, turn the heat down a bit, and leave it for an hour or two."

"That long!?" Rex exclaimed.

I nodded and asked, "Do you have anything planned in the meantime? If not, there are some other things I want to make."

"Yeah, I have time to help. What did you want to make?"

"Chili oil."

"Chilly oil? What's that? Do you need my help to make ice for it?"

"No, not that kind of chilly. I mean like, the vegetable chili, the spicy kinds. Don't worry, you'll understand once it's made."

"Well, how do you make it?"

I looked up at the cabinet full of spices.

"I need to find some ingredients first, but basically you boil oil with some spices, then pour it over other spices. I found a recipe in this Levian cookbook."

"Boiling oil!? That's a little dangerous, isn't it?"

"Well, if you touch it, yeah it's dangerous. Just don't let the oil get on you, I guess. I'll get some stuff from the garden, one second."

I dug up a bulb of garlic as well as a few shallots before heading back inside.

"Can you wash and peel these for me?" I handed them to Rex, who started rinsing them off in the sink.

I went back to the spice cabinet, taking a look at the chili flakes, chili powder, and other spices like star anise and bay leaves that Chef Cooke had bought for me to use.

I took out all the ingredients and brought out another pot to boil the oil in. I poured in a decent amount of oil, enough to just barely fill under half the pot before tossing in all the aromatics. I didn't start the fire yet, since I still needed to crush the garlic and cut the shallots.

Rex finished washing them, so I grabbed a small wooden cutting board and a cleaver, crushing the garlic and being very careful with my fingers when chopping the shallots in half.



A/N: This is the recipe I used for the chili oil: https://thewoksoflife.com/how-to-make-chili-oil/

If you don't feel like spending an hour or two to make the oil yourself, you can buy it from pretty much any Asian supermarket, and the brand I recommend the most is Lao Gan Ma. It's not super spicy (by my standards) and its a really popular choice!