btw is there any norm here for cooking in swizz.....am really surprised
2 days ago i made crab curry for dinner...and my janitor comes and asks me in the most insensitive tone as to what horrible thing i had cooked...as she had vomited coz of the smell and asked me never to cook the same stuff again .i felt very offended...who is she to tell me what to cook in my house.....i do admit that seafood have a stong smell when cooked but that is not the way a neigbhour should overreact............. ............
So I take it you didn't offer her the leftovers then?
Sounds like she could have been more diplomatic to say the least! Having said that - some people do have weak stomachs and certain smells will make them vomit. Maybe your janitor is one of them? If so, there's not really much she can do about it....
Traditional Swiss cooking involves lots of pork (ham, sausage, etc.) potatoes, and cheese (some of which can be VERY smelly). Nothing tremendously spicy and not an awful lot of seafood. You are certainly not required to stick to this cuisine (I don't either!) but if one particular dish bothers your neighbors... it might be a nice gesture not to make that dish too often. I'm sure you can cook lots of other scrumptious stuff.
I should have been neighbours with you - loved crab curry and can be addictive when well made.
I don't think she has overreacted if she has vomited because of the smell...
Well, tough, basically.
Without trying to be insensitive, I think there are certain smells that are certainly too strong and curry is one of them , as tasty as they can be.
I had an officemate that would prepare her food on Sundays for the rest of the week and come on Monday smelling so bad that it did make me sick (and it was not curry ). I do think though that maybe your landlady could have been more tactful, what about ventilating a bit or turning the kitchen system on...
Even Delia Smith's recipes can have that effect.Here's how one journalist described her Seafood risotto .
Post the recipe (please)!
Tom
Two officers from the Federal Immigration office, Bern spent their holidays in Malaysia ( they heard about crab curries and took my suggestion to give it a go ).
They had all praises for it and showed me pics - like locals, using their fingers devouring plates of it in Klang, Selangor, Malaysia .
Luck of the draw basically - my current place has Swiss people not born here - they are OK with my curries, although they might have something against garlic for example.
Unfortunately, seafood is definitely something to be weary of when cooking in areas where there are others who will be affected by the aroma. Plenty of work-places in the US have some serious "no seafood" rules when it comes to utilizing break room microwaves for heating or reheating meals.
Even so, your neighbor certainly could have shown more tact indeed. (Perhaps she's pregnant or otherwise has weak stomach for some reason, that's not your fault though... )
To be on the safe (and extremely) courteous side, perhaps wait a little later in the season to have such meals, when you can open the windows and hopefully get some more ventilation to help with how the aroma travels inside the house. A little dispersal maybe make it a little more tempting to those with easily "offended" noses.
Thankfully so far my neighbors haven't complained about the smells emanating from my apartment, although if they were to "complain", if it is anything like my friends and coworkers in the US, the likely complaint would be that I'm trying to "make" them fat.
My home is also one of those places where a lot of cooking is done due to my little one and our taste for some decent/hot dish at least once a day (breakfast and lunch are all foregone spent with quick meals).
Coming from Mediterranean we do a lot of frying and most of our dishes include a lot of garlic and onions i.e., they cause decent smell. Once after a heavy session, I went down to the garage and due to the low-energie ventilation and heating structure of the building I noticed that the whole garage was smelling after our dishes.
I would have sympathy with the neighbors if they were to criticize the smell though I would also be quite unhappy to hear that. I try to open windows max out the cooking ventilation to minimize damage.
I once bought in some smoked haddock kedgeree to work to re-heat for lunch.
Never. Ever. Again.
How bad could the smell be? Anyway, feel free to use my kitchen any time you want to make another one.
In St. Gallen, in the fifties, my way to high school (Kantonsschule) was about one and a half miles. Depending on the weather, my mood, the time I got up etc., I went on foot, by bike or occasionally by bus.
Sometimes, my mom asked me to buy some "rässe-n-Appezeller" cheese on my way home. That's the spiciest variant, very seasoned, to say the least, hardly ever available in other parts of the country, reserved for real masochists with some sadistic vein too..
Of course I was not meant to buy it at Migros, sealed in air-tight plastic. What dad, a nice man otherwise, wanted was the real thing from a dairy store so small that there was a line outside when there were more than three customers at the same time.
I can tell you, that stuff smelled like pure cr@p. Really. Fortunately it does not taste like that, and higher concentrations of the smell (after unwrapping it) weren't that unpleasant either. But the homeopathic doses of smell emanating from the hand-wrapped little packet always prevented me from riding the bus back home, just in order not to cause a riot.
Of course, I could have done it all the same, having the entire bus for myself. But what does a 15 year old do with a bus without a driver?
Next time, cooks some andouillette. I love the stuff and think it tastes great. But it is made from pigs colon, and smells like it...
I would make it again and serve Durians for dessert.
There was a Chinese restsurant in Oerlikon (now a McDonalds) that had Krebssuppe on the menu. The translation on the English menu read 'Crabs Soup'. An entirely different dish all together!
In similar threads, people have complained about smoking neighbors.
The general consent was that you couldn't do anything about that.
I assume the same is true for the smell from cooking stuff (provided it takes place during normal hours).
If what you cook is legal, there's hardly anything anybody can do about it IMO.
I would not cook it (too often) for the sake of courtesy, yes she was insensitive to ask you not to cook it again,but she has a point.
Yes it's my house, I can cook whatever I want to, till the 'strong' smell does not disturb or starts bothering others who too have rights.
I would fight back if she complains over 'normal' smell of baking a cake etc.. but certain smells are too strong
One man's meat is another man's poison and
Ye shall love your thou neighbour as yourself
How dare you even bother to cook a meal without a kilogram of CHEESE !!!!
....... bloody ausländers
Now Crab and Cheese....... that's a good idea.
or Bratwürst and Cheese.... with Rüsti !!!
...... now THAT'S how the Swiss prefer a good crab curry.