This new edition contains new entrees, side dishes, and soups to make in your clay cooker. The clay cooker is unusually versatile: It can serve as a vegetable steamer, soup kettle, stew pot, brick oven and roaster. This is because clay is a porous material which, when saturated with water and heated in an oven, provides slow evaporation of steam from its pores, creating a moist, enclosed environment for tender, healthy foods.