This cook from Montreal reminds me of a vacation I still want to take. Much as Faita visits a market in Montreal every day, I've long wanted to spend a week or more in Pittsburgh and visit the Strip District every day (check some of the posts in the Pittsburgh tag to get a feel for the Strip). I'd buy the seafood and produce that looked freshest, most tempting, or most exciting; then go back to home base, probably my mother-in-law's kitchen, and cook up a storm. Maybe someday. And maybe then or sometime in between I'll try Faita's version of chicken cacciatore, which looks great.

Cast-Iron Skillet the Key to "Serious" Homemade Pizza

Earlier this month we pointed out a clever idea for using your cast-iron skillet to cook pizza. Today, The Atlantic goes in-depth on cast-iron pizza cooking, crowning it the "secret to serious pizza."

Writer and foodie Vaughn Tan tested various pizza-cooking methods to get the closest-to-restaurant-quality results possible. Here's what he found:

A cast-iron skillet and a broiler in combination are the easy secret to a light, airy, moist, chewy, crisp, lightly-charred pizza without an expensive wood-fired oven or a potentially-expensive experiment with your home oven's safety lock. This pizza will not be quite as good as something baked in under a minute in a roaring-hot pizza oven, but it comes awfully close, all things considered.

The full recipe Tan followed is available here, but the majority of his recipe details the finer points of the cooking process. For example, to prepare the skillet and the oven:

Turn on the broiler and preheat the dry, ungreased skillet on the stovetop on the highest setting for eight to 10 minutes. As soon as you begin heating the skillet, lightly flour a wood cutting board, or better yet a pizza peel.

It's an intense process, and not exactly something you can throw together in a few minutes (his suggested dough needs four to six days to mature), but if you're looking to make a great homemade pizza, it's worth a try.

The Cast-Iron Secret to Serious Pizza [The Atlantic]

Strange to see this posted at Lifehacker just after I used the technique to make Pebble Bread. I'm a believer.

Think you need a pizza stone to make some great homemade pizza? Megan from DIY home weblog Not Martha suggests trying your trusty cast-iron skillet before shelling out for a uni-tasking pizza stone.

Last night we made pizza and since I really, really wanted to make sure the dough cooked all the way through (this time) I decided to cook it in our large cast iron skillet that I had heated in the oven and slid the pizza into to cook, around 450 degrees.

A commenter on the site had also tried the pizza-in-skillet experiment for Chicago-style pizza with impressive results. We love a well seasoned cast-iron skillet for all kinds of kitchen duties, and it's great to see one more use for the versatile kitchen equipment.

cast iron skillet to cook pizza [not martha]

Almost as soon as I get done kicking myself for not thinking of this, I'm gonna try it. (Tonight it's a new borscht recipe from the New York Times. Just made about 60 mushroom-filled dumplings. Anxious to see whether they stay sealed when we cook them)