Friday, August 15, 2008




Of late I have been overcome by moments of pure Mexican nostalgia. We eat a lot of Mexican food at home. This is Mexican food that I cook. One of my family's favourite is my Mexican rice. The secret to Mexican rice is that you have to fry it first and then add chicken broth. Rosemary loves to have yesterday's Mexican rice with fried eggs today. Both Rebecca and Hilary are a bit more daring than Rosemary so I have to make two hot sauces. One has tomatoes, cilantro a bit of surgar, Maldon salt and some fresh squeezed lime juice. To the second sauce I add several serrano peppers. This recipe was given to me by my Mexican/American friend, Robert Hijar who lives in Memphis. He insists that good Mexican salsa never has onion.

My Mexican nostalgia has been peppered on the side by the presence of my new Mexican model, Ms. Hernandez. I a couple of previous blogs I have shown pictures of her. Here is one in colour with some old fashioned Hollywood lighting. I used a metal stamped gobo for the cloud background and my mother's 1953 red sarape. While it was around 26 in my studio it was not hot enough to evoke the brilliant hot light of Mexico. I rarely used a high spot but here it almost brings to me an idea of that heat and light that I long for. Tonight as I lie in bed without covers and not much else the heat will remind me of Mexico and the smell of the tropics of my life in Veracruz or the dry desert heat of my Nueva Rosita, Coahuila days.

This photograph has a bit of John Ford's (1947) The Fugitive , one of my favourite films of all time which was based on a Graham Greene story with the lovely Dolores del Río, Henry Fonda and Pedro Armendáriz.

In colour I can imagine del Río in red just like Ms Hernandez.