Food from yesteryear on middle of plate (5)
I believe the answer is:
pasta
'food' is the definition.
(pasta is a kind of food)
'yesteryear on middle of plate' is the wordplay.
'yesteryear' becomes 'past' ('past' can be a synonym of 'yesteryear').
'on' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'middle of' means to look at the middle letters.
The middle of 'plate' is 'a'.
'past'+'a'='PASTA'
'from' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for pasta that I've seen before include "The stuff of spaghetti, macaroni etc" , "Fare from Italy" , "Spaghetti, orzo etc" , "dish from Italy" , "Spaghetti, perhaps" .)