The chili oil gets made on Tuesdays. Not because Tuesday is special, but because it needs someone's whole attention for forty minutes and Tuesday is the day we can reliably give it.
The ingredients are not a secret: dried chilies of two kinds, garlic, ginger, timur pepper, sesame seeds, a neutral oil. Anyone could write them on a card. What the card cannot carry is the timing, which is the only part that is actually difficult.
The oil comes up slowly and the aromatics go in cold, so they release rather than fry. The chilies go in when the garlic has just started to turn — a minute early and the batch tastes raw, a minute late and it tastes burnt, and burnt chili oil cannot be rescued by anything. The sesame goes in off the heat, using what is left in the pan.
Then it sits for two days. Freshly made chili oil is sharp and slightly thin; it needs those forty-eight hours to settle into something round. Batches made on Tuesday go into service on Thursday, which is the reason for the schedule.
It is the least complicated thing in the kitchen and one of the easiest to get wrong, which is a fair description of most of the food here.
