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!
When I got married, the first thing my daddy bought for us was a cast iron skillet. That was 50 years ago and I still love that one and all the others I have acquired. (The one daddy bought me is now highly collectable.)
How excited were you to have your name right there on the cover of Taste of the South magazine? I love my cast iron. My granny taught me how to cook so many things in hers. When she passed away, I wasn’t thinking abot her skillets and I don’t know what happened to them. I have certainly tried to make up for that with my current collection and I have skillets ranging in size from 4″ to 13″. And I have to agree with Bryan (above) if you didn’t cook it in a cast iron skillet, it just “ain’t” cornbread!
I have found nothing better than black iron skillets and other black iron pots for most cooking. The corn bread cannot be made in any other type of skillet and still be called corn bread! I hope you will publish some of the recipes from the corn bread festival. Thanks for your work, I always look forward to making your recipes.
God bless you and your loved ones.
Got the magazine, loved it EXCEPT there was no picture of your smiling face on there!! My daughter has my grandmother’s corn pone skillet, she thought that was the funniest but greatest thing ever. My grandmother would bake white soup beans and bacon in her skillet when we went camping and I have never been able to replicate the taste of that one particular recipe. My mother is gone now too and that is a recipe gone forever – so that is why it is so important to share those family recipes. See you at the cornbread festival. My daughter and I are making it a mother/daughter weekend.
Does anyone know of someone that calls them “Spider” or Black Spider? That is what my husbands mother called them. When we got married in 1965 and she asked me to bring her that Black Spider, I thought what is she talking about. She kept hers hanging on a wall in the kitchen and I have about 14 hanging on my wall and about 2 others that are not hanging on the wall. I now have one of hers as well as several of my mothers. I can not imagine using anything else to fry food in or make homemade fudge, or cream gravy.
I made grilled cheese sandwiches tonight! Delicious!
This comment is about Martha White. In my town in TN there used to be a plant for Martha White there and my grandfather, who had moved into town from the farm, worked there. My grandfather had white (gray) hair and they told me that his hair was white because of the white flour there. I was so little that I believed them! Guess I’ve always been gullible.
Another comment about Martha White…when I first moved to TX 3 decades ago, we could not get Martha White flour or cornmeal here. So every time I visited TN I would bring back supplies of Martha White’s Hotrize Cornmeal mix. Gotta have that cornbread. BTW, we can get Martha White here now.
Wish I could find ANY cornmeal here in England. You cant make dressin’ for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner without Cornbread!!!! It’s just not DONE!!!