I grew up in the South. South Carolina, to be exact. In a part of this country where cast iron is so ubiquitous, it’s almost a cliché. My grandmother, Estee — our all-mighty, no-nonsense family matriarch — always kept a skillet on the stove, seeing her “old black pan” as a nothin’-special, no-frills kitchen tool to be used day in, day out.
And so that’s pretty much how I saw it, too, even inheriting the thing with little fanfare. That is, until years later, when it laid on the ground at my feet.
It was the early aughts. I’d just fried some bacon. And in one fumbling second, I stood on my back porch in Maryland and watched it slip through my fingers, landing on the concrete with a whack. A long, thin crack now lingered across the surface, nearly splitting it in half.
Everything changed, right then and there, on the day that I dropped Estee’s pan. By then, I was already interested in cast iron cookware, mostly by way of gathering up vintage skillets for cooking over open fires with friends. But that was the one I used, and suddenly, it meant something. In that moment, I had broken not just the pan, but also the possibility of passing it on — an otherwise ordinary object instantly transformed into a priceless family heirloom.
At first, I wanted to repair it, for my kids. Then I found myself on an all-out crusade to recreate it. Might say I got carried away.
