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!
My cast iron is my grandmother’s. Everytime I cook fried potatoes and onions (with bacon grease) it brings me back to her kitchen.
I have a cast iron skillet passed down frm my MIL and several pieces given to us as wedding gifts. After 33 years of marriage they are well seasoned. My favorite memory involving a cast iran skillet is my Dad frying chicken in my Mom’s 12 inch skillet over the campfire every time we went camping when I was growing up. You have not had good fried chicken until you have had it fried over a campfire! Wait until you have a nice big bed of coals and put the skillet right on the coals! I know all our neighbors on the campground were drooling!
Christy, Just had to reply when the subject is cast iron skillets, I am a midwest born gal. But was raised by southern born parents.And was taught to cook southern style. Cast iron skillets were just a natural way of cooking to us.And I wouldn’t trade my southern teaching heritage for all the finest cooking classes!! And i wouldn’t trade my cast iron skillets for the best nonstick cookware out there!
I have two regular iron skillets, 1 small that I use for cornbread at my house, large pan is to much. I have 2 dutch ovens, one with a handle and a cornbread stick pan. They were ALL passed down from my grandmother and great grandmother. I wouldn’t give anything for my iron skillets. Now I want to add a griddle and a wok! I just don’t get it when people want to bake cornbread in a cake pan…..that is not cornbread! And Fried Chicken is NOT fried chicken unless you fry it in an iron skillet!
I too have my grandma’s cast iron skillets, one of which is mainly used for cornbread. (BTW — our family cornbread recipe is VERY close to Christy’s!) I too have had others come in my kitchen and scrub at it — AHHH! Fortunately, it is so old and well-seasoned that it didn’t take too much work to recover it 🙂 I wouldn’t trade it for any other pot/pan in the world. I can’t imagine how many pans of cornbread it has made over years — oh, the stories that skillet could tell!
I have 2 cast iron skillets,one from my mom and one my son found when he was hunting. He said it was burried in the earth, just the handle sticking out. I cleaned and reseasoned it. I use my skillets for just about everything, from frying to baking. Now if I could just find a good old dutch oven.
I have several cast iron pieces passed on to me from my grandmothers. I recently passed a dutch oven on to my daughter-in-law. She was delighted. My mom could cook some of the best fried chicken in one of her skillets, she of course, used lard to help with the flavor too.