Chapter Text
“Choi Seungcheol.”
“Don’t call me that!” The scowl meant he was annoyed, but to Jihoon, that held little weight. “It’s not like I’m stalling or anything! The bag won’t-”
Before he could finish, the bag of raisins ripped under his strength, and luckily for him, mostly falling into the enormous pot he had waiting on a cold stove.
Jihoon tutted, amused, but helped to clean up. “Messy. Is this why I came to help? You needed a maid?”
“You’re bullying me.”
“We were supposed to be nearly done by now. You were late to get up, then you took an hour to even get to the supermarket – it’s past lunchtime already. This was your idea.”
“Okay, okay, Grinch. How much am I supposed to put in?”
“Of the raisins? 600 grams.” Jihoon looked up from the recipe on his phone.
Seungcheol checked the bag, and threw what little he had left into the pot, and used the scissors so kindly provided by his companion to snip open the second, and dump it in too. “Alright, what now?”
“Dried cranberries, 200 grams, and dried currants, also 200 grams. Oh, and the same of cherries.”
This took some finagling with a scale, but eventually, Seungcheol deposited the correct amount of each in with the raisins.
“Okay, now the yuzu jam. Er… 150 grams.”
Seungcheol looked at the jar. “This is 190 grams, do you think it’ll matter?”
Jihoon shrugged innocently.
The two stood in silence for a moment, and Seungcheol simply opened the jar and deposited the contents in their entirety into the pot. “What next, Mr. Chef?”
“Four apples, chopped.” He supervised as Seungcheol carefully used the knife, actively not cutting himself, until he had diced apples, that were added.
“Okay, now… uh…” He had to scroll for a moment. “One kilo of sugar.”
Seungcheol made a face, eyes bulging. “Okay, I know it’s supposed to be a dessert, but…”
Jihoon tip-toed to look into the pot. “There’s a lot in there,” he reasoned.
The ingredients had looked so paltry, almost sad, on the countertop, but piled high inside the pot, suddenly it looked a little more daunting. Seungcheol dutifully snipped open a bag of sugar and dumped everything in. When bid to do so, he added a two teaspoons of cinnamon, then nutmeg, then clove, and chopped a nub of ginger the size of his thumb to add.
“Now is the fun bit.”
He couldn’t have agreed more: Seungcheol popped the cork on the bottle and poured them each a glass of wine before dumping the rest of the bottle in with the assorted fruit, listening to the satisfying glug-glug sound as it went in, and switched the stove on.
It was surprisingly hard to take the small wooden spoon and stir all that fruit, at first, but as the wine began to simmer, the fruit all plumped up, adequately mixed with the spice and sugar, it became a little easier.
“I don’t think this is right,” he said.
“What?”
“It’s like… really dry?”
“Well, where’s the rest of the wine?” Jihoon asked, suddenly very aware of the empty glass in his hand.
Seungcheol looked at him. “That’s it. That’s all there is.”
There was a moment of quiet as Jihoon took this information in and tried not to despair. “Seungcheol,” he said conversationally, “when I asked you to buy the wine, and I told you we needed 75cl, you did account for the two glasses you poured out, didn’t you?”
He put his hand over his mouth, horrified. “Oh, shit.”
Jihoon tried not to sigh. “Alright, do you have any other alcohol?”
“Can you just substitute it for wine?” he asked, already moving to open the cabinet. “Wine’s a very particular flavour.”
Jihoon picked up the wooden spoon and stirred the thick fruit. “Well, we can’t leave it like this, or it’ll never blend.”
“I only have vodka or brandy.” He brandished a bottle in either hand. “Actually, there’s not much vodka.”
“Brandy it is.”
There was a discussion about how much brandy should go in exactly, until they decided to just add a little at a time, until the fruit mixture looked a little more hydrated, and then they switched the heat off, to let it cool.
“See, it’s already four o’ clock,” Jihoon groaned, flopping down onto the couch, “and we still have so much to do. I knew we should have started yesterday. We’ll still be at this at midnight.”
Seungcheol rubbed his shoulders from behind, unwilling to feel guilty over it. “Well since the fruit has to cool, shouldn’t we already prepare the dough now? That way it can all be done.” There was a pause. “I’ll order food in, what are you in the mood for?”
“Chicken,” he said immediately. “And beer.”
The two of them, in Seungcheol’s miniscule kitchen, got to work defrosting store-bought pastry – after all, there was a limit to how much time they were willing to spend on the venture – and cutting out circles, until they had a stack of pastry to impressive, they really weren’t sure they would have enough to stuff it with.
Jihoon left Seungcheol in charge of schlepping spoonfuls of the fruit into his high-power blender, while he himself cracked and beat eggs, and since Seungcheol only made a slight mess, as opposed to the fear he would forget the lid and wine fruit would be everywhere, he considered it a great success.
The recipe was very clear: a heaped teaspoon of mixture would go into the middle of a circle of pastry, and then it was to be sealed up with the beaten egg like a dumpling – the dumplings were to be laid on a tray, brushed with egg on top, and baked, for 20 minutes, and 180 degrees Celsius. The first ones took at least 35, but once the oven was warm, it went quickly, between bites of chicken and helpings of beer.
But Jihoon was right. They were at it until midnight, when they ran out of pastry long before they ran out of fruit paste: the remainder was placed in an airtight jar and slid into the liquor cabinet, and Jihoon and Seungcheol fell asleep next to each other without more ceremony.