Monte Cristo Skillet – and Your Cast Iron Memories
This delicious recipe is at the bottom of the post. Hope you get to try it soon!
Be sure and share your special Cast Iron memories in the comments below!
(more details at bottom of post)
Today I’m thrilled to bring you a guest post from the good folks at Martha White, along with a fun announcement! The National Cornbread Festival is coming up! The cornbread festival is held each year in the neat little town of South Pittsburg, Tennessee, and this year Martha White has asked me to be a judge. So I get to participate in the festival AND taste all of the yummy entries, to boot! The festival is a weekend long family event with all sorts of fun activities taking place, including tours of the Lodge Cast Iron Factory. Click the Cornbread Festival logo at the bottom of this post to visit the official homepage and learn more.
I’m really looking forward to meeting more of the Southern Plate Family! We have a page over on Facebook where folks can RSVP that they are coming so if you plan on coming out for the fun this year so click here to head on over there and let me know so I can look forward to seeing your face and keep you posted on times and location of the Southern Plate Family meet and greet.
I’m also hoping some of you will enter the competition. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a member of the Southern Plate family won it? I happen to know that y’all are a group of extremely talented cooks – who cook for the love of family and friends – and I can’t imagine a dish tasting better than one made by one of you. For the official rules of the competition, click here. To go ahead and enter, click here.
This Monte Cristo Skillet was the Grand Prize Winner of the 2006 National Cornbread Festival. It caught my eye because I recently had my very first Monte Cristo Sandwich and absolutely loved it. Southern Living sent me to Charleston to do some presentations for the Taste of Charleston Festival. Have you ever been to Charleston? Oh my goodness gracious, is that a beautiful town! With every sight and sound I became more determined to bring my family back there someday so I could experience it with them (It is hard to enjoy a trip without the folks you want to share it with beside you).
As I’ve started traveling from time to time I’ve taken a queue from my adventurous counterparts at SL and started making it a point to try something new in each place if possible. In Charleston, I had my first Monte Cristo Sandwich and it was right up my alley. I ate it in the cafe of a beautiful hotel right downtown. The flavors were a unique combination for me: Ham, cheese, battered and toasted bread drizzled with a sweet fruit preserves and sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar. It was part lunch, part breakfast, part sandwich, part dessert, and all the way good!
So when Martha White offered to guest post I got to nosing around for what recipe I thought would appeal the most to everyone and as soon as this skillet came before my eyes, my heart just settled on it.
This recipe is quick to throw together and feeds six people. I like strawberry preserves with mine but feel free to use whichever you like best. I also omit the turkey and use additional ham in it’s place. Lunchmeat ham works just fine!
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Love Your Cast Iron?
Be sure and pick up this month’s special Cast Iron issue of Taste Of The South. It is filled to the BRIM with delicious recipes for your cast iron skillet, gorgeous food photography,
and those sweet people even put my name on the cover!
I don’t know who is more tickled, me or my mother!
As A young boy growing up in a family with 6 kids, Meals were an important time for us. My MOM had sereral cast iron pans, But her favorite was a deep 14″ fry skillet with a hinged lid! She used it all the time and My Grand-Father (MOM’S DAD), on Sunday mornings would use it to fry bacon and then make “RED EYE GRAVY” (Coffee and the bacon fat!).
My younger Sister ended up with the skillet and she lives in California still, I live in North Carolina. And she and I have a game we play…It’s called “STEAL THE SKILLET”! When I go to visit her, I always find a way to steal it and bring it home with me and when she comes to see me, she steals it back!
At least for a time, it’s mine!
Does anyone know where to purchase an electric cast iron skillet? I had one years ago but lost in my divorce..dang…
My Mama has a cast iron skillet that is totally smooth on the inside bottom and black as the ace of spades. Nothing sticks in that pan! I’d love to have it, but probably my sister will inherit it since she lives with and cares for Mama who is now 96 years old! She doesn’t cook anymore, but in her heyday she could
literally put on a feed to end them all. Folks would come from all around to
put their feet under Mama’s table. Even the hobo’s who “rode the rails” at the
end of WWII would find their way to our house to be served a plate!
Molly, when you mentioned hobos it rang such a memory bell with me. when I was little (60 years ago) we lived -close to a rainroad. My mother always fed them….. and they were very gracious and grateful to her. Nowadays, you’d never dream of letting a stranger come into your house like that. But, my mother believed you never let anyone go hungry if you could help it. I’m a little like that now.
BTW…. on the other side of the rainroad tracks was an old hobo camp right on the banks of the river. When I was nine years old I use to sneak over there and visit with them. They were very kind and gentle and would not cuss or say ugly words in front of me. I’d sit on a wooden apple box turned on its side and listen to them play their harmonicas and sing. I’d join in singing with them………..
Can you even believe what would happen to a little girl today?
My dad threatened to switch my legs if I ever went over there again. I never once felt frightened………. but today I’m afraid to walk in a parking lot alone at night…….
I too have my mom’s cast iron skillets, one small and one large, plus a cornstick pan. Many fond memories of good food cooked in those pans! Also, I have my mom’s set of Wearever pots and pans she got when she married my dad in 1954. The old wood handles were replaced in the 1980’s (by the Cutco man…best knives ever made!) and I use them every day.Recently my aunt gave me some Wearever pans that belonged to my grandmother, and she even had the original sales slip…from 1945!! Since both my mom and grandma are gone now, I treasure all of these pans.
P.S. I had my first Monte Cristo sandwich at the old Opryland theme park in my home town of Nashville TN. They were awesome! I had one every trip to the park. Gee I miss Opryland!!
I love Taste of the South and I will definitely pick up this issue since your name is on the cover and all with cast iron skillets!!! YAY! Love my skillet.
My grandma used to make her chocolate gravy in a iron skillet and it was goooood. Not only would she make for breakfast.She would make it for sunday dinner we had at her house to pour over a box cake she would make. Everyone loved it there never was any left.I do not know who has the skillet,but I would love to have.
Hi Christy, I have really enjoyed all of your posts and recipes, I sent you a message a few weeks ago, about your Baked Squash Casserole, when ever I try to print the recipe out, it comes out in very large print, and will only print part of the recipe.Just thought you would like to know, Any other recipe I have tried, comes out ok, the only one I really, really want is the Baked Squash. Any way, back to the question at hand, Cast Iron pots, I had my Grandmothers Large Dutch Oven, she said she got it from her mom, she passed it down to me and recently I passed it to my daughter, so it has been in the family now for 5 generations, and still cooks good.