[Sca-cooks] Soapstone pan or griddle?

[Lilinah]

I'm blissfully wallowing in Nawal Nasrallah's "Annals of the Caliphs' 
Kitchens: Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq's Tenth-Century Baghdadi Cookbook". 
It's a massive work, and besides the translation of the cookbook, 
itself a vast undertaking, Nasrallah has quantities of other terrific 
information, glossaries, quotes from other early Arabic language 
books on food, etc...

Anyway, some of the recipes specify using a soapstone pot. And after 
months of reading, i just remembered that some of my early (late 
1960s) "health food" cookbooks specified soapstone griddles.

Does anyone know more about cooking with soapstone pans? Special 
benefits or problems with them? (well, other than potentially 
dropping and shattering them) Where to purchase them?

Thanks,
-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita

My LibraryThing
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/lilinah