The top isn't a mess of food. This is largely dependent on what you cook. Fish skin sometimes gets cooked on, glaze bubbles and chars, oil lights on fire and the top surface chars. Something like shrimp, tomato, or sausage will be fairly clean though, and nothing will cook on to the top.
Impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca's area (impairment speaking) or Wernicke's area (impairing understanding, damage in rear parietal/temporal region in the left hemisphere)
The authors say that the region of the brain that preferentially processes numerals is close to the area that is responsible for interpreting language, which makes sense since people often read words and numbers together.