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!
South Pittsburg, TN, not Alabama. Don’t want people trying to find it on their GPS and get list.
The recipe looks great, all these stories are priceless.
And the Taste of the South magazine, is worth buying, my subscription runs back to back for the next few years.
We grew up with my mother using her cast iron for cornbread and gravies. I use mine mostly for making my gravy to go with the biscuits.
It is so funny that your subject is a cast iron skillet. When our great-grandmother passed away, our grandmother got her cast iron skillets. When our grandmother passed away, mom divided those skillets among us ( I have 3 sibs), and kept one for herself. We have very fond memories of our great-grandmother and grandmother cooking on wood stoves with those skillets. Sadly, we lost our mother this past summer. We are still trying to figure out who gets what (very friendly), but I’m going to beg for those cast iron skillets as I plan on getting a wood stove in my new house. And, as we all know, you gotta have a cast iron skillet to cook on a wood stove! lol!! Wish me luck!! lol!
I have my grandfather’s cast iron skillet; I don’t know how old it is, but I think it is at least older than I am. It is the only pan I will use for cornbread!
When my mama died, the sister after me got her iron skillet (boo, boo It is quite old) . So….while at an old country auction one night I noticed along the wall’s this guy had hung iron skillet’s. Needless to say, I couldn’t let them stay there!! I begged him to let me buy 2 of them. They are quite old (you can tell by looking at them) they just have the wear and tear “OLD all over them”. I use them for everything, cornbread, chicken, and recently “pineapple upside down cake” and Lordy did it taste better!! And when I go camping…….my cast iron’s go with me—fired taters, eggs, biscuits, hey! I have even done grits in them!! I am now the proud owner of 3 iron skillets, all different sizes… ;o)
Since we were children someone in the family has always made my older brother a Pineapple Upside Down Cake in a cast iron skillet for his birthday. He turned 80 last year, so that’s a lot of tradition!
Christy, I bought a Lodge Logic skillet a few years back. It is indispensable. Also, my mother has 2 iron skillets, one for sister and one for me when momma goes. They belonged to my Granny, who got them from great grand when she married in 1926. We don’t really know how old they are. She also has a couple of club alluminum pots which were wedding presents to Granny. She still uses those as well. Le Creuset offered me all their best pieces in exchange for those cooking heirlooms, I would turn them down. Wouldn’t take anything for those treasures.
I Love the Club Aluminum also…My Mama had some and My Daddy wont turn loose of them…my Sister and I both want them, so I have been trying to collect some of my own…not the same as Mamas but they’ll have to do for now…