From Hell To Breakfast: Musical Review, With Recipe: Raising Sand & Spinach Madeline

On those occassions when you feel like your raw intelligence is that of a postage stamp compared to your kids, friends, enemies, and other people whom you suspect of having more money, better breath, and better sex than you have, you might consider popping in the unlikely CD Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Allison Krauss. 

Be sure the CD player is on shuffle. This CD is rigged to make the most of Plant's subtle, crooner-ish, bluesy, been-to-hell-and-left-my-soul-there voice and Allison Krauss's unearthly I-was-born-old harmonies. Consequently some of the songs feel a little long unless you're crazy about roots music meeting the blues and smooching them. (I happen to be.)  It will help not to know what's coming up, so shuffle it is. 

The songs are selected by Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack producer T-Bone Burnett, and dip into the canon of roots, blues, and rock.They aim for hitting that lonely crease in the spirit where you feel alone with somebody, someone whose company emphasizes the sad melody that your life seems to be becoming. 

The other trick to listening to this CD is remembering that Robert Plant howled for Jimmy Page and company in Led Zeppelin. (Yes. THAT Robert Plant is singing roots music with Allison Krauss.) When you do, it's a little like reminding yourself that the lowly, unexciting spinach can be made utterly rivetting with a little attention to it.

So instead of shuffle, buy some ingredients and make a playlist.

While listening to "Fortune Teller," cook two packages of frozen chopped spinach, reserving the liquor. Set aside. 

Butter-melting and roux making is best done while listening to "Stick With Me Baby." Melt four tablespoons of butter in the saucepan, add two tablespoons of flour and stir until smooth. Add a quarter-cup or so of chopped onion. Stir constantly until the onion is clear. Add a quarter cup of the liquor from cooking the spinach. Stir it until the mixture thickens a bit, and drop in an 1/2 cup of evaporated milk. Stir.

Now it gets interesting. Put "Please Read the Letter That I Wrote," and time it so that you get to the last chorus just as you add the cheese:

Add a dash of Worcestershire sauce, about 3/4 tsp of celery salt, 3/4 tsp of garlic salt, 1/4 tsp black pepper, and the merest dash of red pepper. (This is the part where you remember, "Holy cow. That's Robert Plant! I mean THE Robert Plant, who did 'The Battle of Evermore'!")

Add grated jalapeno jack cheese... say, about a cup to begin with, stirring it in and melting it until it thickens to about where you like it ("Please read the letter...")

You can sprinkle breadcrumbs on top during the outro, if you want.

Put on "Your Long Journey" and eat it as a cracker-dip, over rice, or all by its glorious naked lonesome self.