How was it made?

ie, are there whole chillis just floating around in the bottle of oil or are they kind of blended up in it so there are no chunky bits? Is the oil itself cloudy?

I would have thought it was more to be used as a dipping sauce for crustini kind of thing similar to olive oil and balsamic vinegar and rock salt.

If it's the blended kind, I'd say it's really only meant to be used in asian or indian cooking where there are many other flavours to complement and offset its potency.

If used like regular oil to cook a steak for example, the heat would bring out the chilli more as well.

Have a look at the ingredients list too - what sort of chillis were used? Different varieties vary in their heat.

Make a small batch of salad dressing and see if the flavour is as intense.

I've never used it to actually cook with, I'm sorry, mainly to flavour dips or as dipping sauces etc or to drizzle over pizzas or to finish off stirfry kind of dishes.

To take the heat out of huighly alkaline dishes (chilli is an alkaline) use something acidic such as lemon/lime or for salad dressings, vinegar

Or, I'll have a guess here, but sour cream, coconut milk and yoghurts feature pretty heavily in Indian cooking, I'm thinking this may well be the reason, so add a bit of one of these at a time.