Curry for Beginners

This is probably an obvious statement coming form someone who has a book blog, but I'm a sucker for stories of all kinds. No matter how small, the littlest snippet of a life other than my own can set my imagination going. I noticed a recent example of this during the wine tasting at the vineyard I visited on Cape Cod. The woman who ran the tasting did a really good job of creating a little story to go along with each wine. Beyond just describing their flavors, she talked about how she drinks each particular wines, such as a certain red that she said was best sipped during dinner preparation and then lingered over until dessert. My favorite wine of the tasting was a vignoles, a new discovery for me that was described as being the perfect wine to take to a Thai restaurant or drink along with takeout curry. All of which is just a long-winded way of saying that I've been in the mood for curry ever since then, and so, in an attempt to recreate the little story of the wine, made a homemade curry dish for the first time.

I chose a recipe for a three veggie curry from the Pretty Delicious cookbook, tweaking it slightly to use quinoa instead of the brown rice it called for. The combination of carrots, mushrooms, zucchini, and chickpeas almost made it verge on being a hearty winter dish, but a touch honey lightened it up with a hint of sweetness. It might not be much to look at, but the end result was pretty delicious, proving that the cookbook does indeed live up to its name. It was only after I have finished enjoying it that I realized  I had made a beginner's curry mistake: I didn't run the oven vent fan while I was cooking, which left the smell of curry lingering in my apartment for days. I even woke up in the middle of the night a couple of times smelling curry. After extensively burning multiple candles, the air finally cleared, but left me thinking that curried dishes might be best left to takeout from now on.

Do you cook with curry? Do you have any tricks for containing its smell?