Philadelphia Weekly

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This week I embarked on preparing one entree from Jose Garces' new cookbook, Latin Evolution (with April White, Lake Isle Press, $38). The recipe had to meet three criteria. First, there should be an accompanying photo so I could compare my results. Second, the preparation and cook time couldn't exceed 12 hours. Third, I needed to locally acquire every single ingredient listed (Garces often suggests mail-ordering items).

Despite my best efforts, hours in grocery stores and a spreadsheet of recipes and shopping lists, my final choice--sous vide truffled chicken with fried eggs, rosemary fingerling potatoes and truffled chicken jus--didn't meet all three criteria. I could find neither black truffle peels nor black trumpet mushrooms, their suggested substitute. But I pushed on. I started preparations at 1:30 p.m., took a three-hour break and resumed cooking. I sat down to dinner at 12:45 a.m.

In Evolution Garces charts both the "Spanish sphere of culinary influence" on the Americas (onions, garlic and citrus) and the appearance of New World ingredients in Spanish cuisine (tomatoes, potatoes, vanilla, chocolate and honey). Garces taps into the cornucopia of traditional ingredients from the Spanish-speaking world, then adds more contemporary elements and executes a dish using rigorous French technique. Each recipe is presented as a compound unit of three or four mini recipes followed by an explanation on putting it all together.

Home cooks will benefit from realizing how many components of a meal can be made ahead (and then warmed up in a saucepan with heart-stopping quantities of butter). The practical application for many of these mini recipes is that the less ambitious chef could include one with a not-so-fussy meal. The rosemary-brown butter applesauce, saffron potato puree, Seville orange marmalade and bomba rice sound like perfect sides for a fall menu.

Of all the chapters, the one on ceviche and tiradito is perhaps the most accessible to home cooks. If you can get over finding fresh piquillo chiles, squid ink, yellow watermelon and blue foot mushrooms then you may have something to show for yourself in less than an hour. A more straightforward cousin of the recipe I tried is the roasted chicken breast with poblano cornbread, charred pineapple and red chile sauce. But with its abundance of obscure ingredients and time-consuming preparation, I'm not convinced this volume was intended to inspire us to head to the kitchen.

In my case I'm betting that only pages 209 to 213 will display that telltale sign of a well-loved cookbook: greasy truffle-oil stains and smears of jus and yolk. But what I've lost in confidence (and after nine hours cooking, in youth), I've made up for in respect for what Garces accomplishes in his restaurants' kitchens (Amada, Tinto, Distrito). He, White and photographer Tina Rupp produced a beautiful book, and while it might end up on my coffee table, Latin Evolution will encourage me to add Amada to my short list for a Saturday-night supper.