an interesting cooking pan

I was watching an episode of Simply Ming recently, and his guest had an interesting cooking pan which he used to cook a shellfish dish. It was Portuguese in origin, and had a hinged tight-fitting lid. It serves not only as a stove-top cooking pan, but also as a serving dish at the table. I didn’t catch the name, so I went to Ming’s web site and tried to find it. Not finding anything, I did a Google search and found nothing. I then asked two serious foodies on Facebook, one a cousin, the other a long-time friend, what it might be. Both came up empty.

That being the case I went back to Ming’s web site and dug a little deeper. Turns out it was there, it’s just that the web site is not terribly well organized. It’s called a cataplana. They are rare and pricey. Since it appears to be mostly used for cooking shellfish I doubt that I will ever buy one, but still it was an interesting discovery in the culinary world.

photo credit: An en Alain, Creative Commons license