Su Cuisine

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by Cathy Robbins, for Su Casa Magazine

Many great cooks and chefs first learn to cook by watching their mothers in the kitchen. Ted Zmroczek learned to cook because his mother wasn’t even in the kitchen.

A week after Ted and Stephanie Zmroczek had met, Ted told her, “Let me cook for you. If you’re not in love with me now, you will be.”

When Zmroczek’s mother got a part-time job as a supermarket clerk that kept her away from home at dinner time, she left out simple things for him to prepare for himself, his father, and his younger brother—ground meat with seasonings, for instance. Soon he learned the basics of dishes like baked chicken.

“By the time I was 13, I had a real healthy interest in cooking,” he says.

Today, Zmroczek’s friends count “a Ted meal” among life’s great adventures. In the rather conventional kitchen of his home in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains, the 47-year-old builder recently showed why he has gained a reputation as one of Albuquerque’s best home cooks.

“There are really only 10 floor plans in the world. For every house, you can say it’s one of those. The same can be says for a lot of recipes.” —Ted Zmroczek

The menu for a summer feast with five wines was daunting. The meal was something that might be served in a northern Italian kitchen. Dinner started informally—an antipasto served with a mascarpone-based spread and toast points and accompanied by Iron Horse California champagne. For hors d’ouevres Zmroczek topped fresh oysters on the half-shell first with pancetta and spinach, then a generous dollop of compound butter. Next he grilled them over a charcoal fire seeded with brandy-soaked mesquite chips and served them with a Pouilly Fume. For the salad, Zmroczek tossed radicchio, whitefish, and grapefruit with a sherry cream dressing and set out a bottle of Pinot Grigio.

Cathy Robbins writes for Su Casa, High Country News, Crosswinds Weekly, and The New York Times

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