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 my husband and I were married in 1968, my grandmother said I was to have the cast iron skillet Grandpa gave her on their wedding day. They were poor sharecroppers in the MS Delta and the treasured cast iron skillet was as special to her as the pearl earrings my husband gave to me. Anyway, I finally got this skillet in 2010. I love it and I’m so grateful to finally have it. Have fun at the Cornbread Festival. Our Sunday School class went a few years ago and had great fun!
I’m sad to say my “heirloom” iron skillet was accidentally broken when we moved 5 years ago. It was a complete shock – we didn’t even know it was possible to break an iron skillet. Such a tragic loss! I’m not sure how old it was because I’m not sure how long my mother had it before she gave it to me, but only 40 or 50 years I guess. I do still have a small one (maybe 6 inches) and a cornbread stick pan that are both old and were my mother’s, and a brand new miniature cornbread stick pan.
My cast iron skillet is square, which is a shape I haven’t seen around very often.
It was my mother’s, her mother’s before that, and her mother’s before that! Needless to say… it’s been seasoned well. It’s almost as non-stick as the best non-stick pan out there!
I love to make Dixie Cornbread in it and it’s wonderful to sear a steak in.
90% of what we cook, we use cast iron. we have several skillets and various pots for deep frying fish, chicken and taters. We even have a cast iron bundt pan!~heavy!!~
Bless your heart Christy, but South Pittsburg is in Tennessee, and you take a cue, not a queue (that’s where you stand in line at Disneyworld). I’m a retired newspaper editor. Let me know if you need a copy editor!
I grew up cooking in cast iron. When I got married, my mother gave me 2 skillets in different sizes. That has been 37 years ago. I only own cast iron skillets and now have about 8 from very tiny to huge. My son’s friends (in their twenties) think we are so cool to use cast iron. I think it is funny because I do it so routinely. I cook everything in those skillets. They have been scrubbed, washed, soaked. They are indestructible. What else can you say that about these days? Guess what I will be buying my son when he gets married?
I was born and raised in MI but a few months ago moved to Greenville, SC. My heart kept telling me I belonged in the South…My Mama never cooked in cast iron and I’m sure my Grandmama did at one time but I have never witnessed it. I LOVE cast iron…I have started collecting it…I got some new pieces from the Lodge store in TN. and I snatch up every piece I see at a yard sale. I recently bought some down here in SC from a gentleman that had quite a bit. I got 2 old cast iron waffle irons and a skillet that is 18-20 in. in diameter. I did pay a pretty penny for those but I HAD to have them, and Hubby obliged. I have some rust to take care of and some seasoning to do but that’s ok with me, as these are my new pride and joys…