Robert Wyatt Story (BBC Four, 2001) The Lazy Cook's Way to Great Black Beans. Easy, delicious black beans take almost no skill, just some time. [Photographs: Vicky Wasik] The recipe gurus of this fair site have said some mighty smart things about the humble bean. For instance, if there's one standout nugget of know-how in Kenji's treatise on chili, it's how salting beans before you cook them makes them especially plump and flavorful, and that they won't, contrary to popular belief, turn into little rocks. (He's also roasted them for super-meaty black bean burgers.) Then, Daniel did the deepest of dives into the difference between dried and canned beans, and he made some killer refried beans along the way—refritos any Tex-Mex joint would be thrilled to serve. These gents are smarter than I am, and better cooks too, so if you want to maximize every gram of flavor in your beans, listen to them. But today I'm taking a simpler approach.
Everyone should have a good pot of beans in their repertoire. They also take about no work at all. 1. 2. How it's Done But wait? Bill Callahan, Live In Concert.
10 Favorite World Music Albums Of 2013 : Best Music Of 2013. Music's 50 Favorite Albums Of 2013 : Best Music Of 2013. These are the albums we loved the most this year. In what we've written about each one below, you can see what we felt should be rewarded, what shook us up and what sucked us in over the 12 months of 2013. Not every one of the 22 different people with bylines here agree on which albums did any of that to them — we don't listen the same way, or for the same reasons — but you'll read the word "warm" more than once (as applied to an indie songwriter, a country singer and two electronic producers). We were seduced by darkness at least five times (electronic, rock, classical, metal) and loved sounds that we call "delicate" (three out of four made by men).
"Wry" hit the spot twice (country singer again, and a pair of rappers). Those shared words could be the limitations of language, but they might illuminate what this cross-section of music lovers most needed to hear this year. These 50 albums are strange bedfellows, but that's how we listen. NPR Music's 50 Favorite Albums Of 2013. ?uestlove And Elvis Costello On Writing Together. Hide caption? Uestlove and The Roots play backing band to Elvis Costello on the new collaborative album Wise Up Ghost. Courtesy of the artist ? Uestlove and The Roots play backing band to Elvis Costello on the new collaborative album Wise Up Ghost. Since NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon launched in 2009, Elvis Costello has been a frequent guest. That became a friendship — and that friendship eventually blossomed into a collaboration. Hear how Costello turned the chore of crafting live set lists into a game of chance. "Me and Steve Mandel did everything but plot a kidnapping and torture this record out of him," ?
"When I did my initial interview with Lorne Michaels and Jimmy Fallon, and they were giving me scenarios of how this could be a good look for The Roots to take this late-night gig, one of the examples was, 'And Thursday nights, someone like Elvis Costello could come sit in.' Costello and ?