By Angela Denstad
Time and again, it begins in the fall: I get sucked into a seasonal time warp wherein I imagine all the best treats will magically converge on a collective table of sheer memory, citing, “Oh, I made this once!” as evidence that all things should again appear. String together a couple decades of culinary curiosity and that’s a whole lot of recipe re-creation to reassemble in, say, an afternoon.
As Keats wrote, “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/ Are sweeter;” and so perhaps it is with all sweet recall. Haunted by remembered tastes – like Marcel Proust’s madeleine – I search for lost time amid recipe books and measuring cups. Half archaeologist, half Mary Shelley’s “modern Prometheus” (as she likened her mad scientist, Frankenstein), I piece together the ephemera of holiday traditions – beginning, quixotically, with Halloween.
When I was young, I was completely astounded by the notion that anything magnificent should fall into ruin. It seemed inconceivable, for instance, that the Roman Forum could become a salvage yard, then lay half buried and forgotten through decades of decline and neglect. But here I am in 2025 with all the technology assistance of browser histories and searchable camera rolls, and I can’t even keep my own recipe collection intact.
Just this week, determined to forward on a seasonal recipe to my son so he could serve it to college friends in his house community, I was confronted with actual evidence of the recipe being a ghost. I found the exact page in the cookbook I knew was the source – but it now contained much less than before; the main ingredient – the meat – was missing!
Clearly having taken a page from Mary Shelley, I must have Frankensteined recipes together in my own mind. Having done it so often, I believed it to be real. Now, reminiscent of that mighty king-of-kings Ozymandias (a poem written by Mary Shelley’s husband, coincidentally), the recipe is lost to the sands of time.
Sometimes it’s hard to overcome the feeling, in T.S. Eliot’s words, that I “Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,/ I have measured out my life with coffee spoons” and that there’s no new culinary stone to unturn, no tricky treat I haven’t tried, to failure or delight.
And then, unexpectedly, along comes something new – an elegant solution to a problem, a recipe engineered like magic, so creative and clever as to spark imagination as it sates the appetite. Make a sandwich? Quotidian. Make a sandwich sans bread, you say? Witchcraft! And yet, that’s what the affable Jamie Oliver, celebrity chef, pulled off clear as day – a feat so arresting as to halt the doomscroll I’d fallen into after failing to turn up my phantom recipe through iPhone archeology.
Got 10 minutes? You could use them to craft a fresh, toasty sandwich out of a handful of pantry ingredients and a raid on your fridge – from hot ham and cheese to chocolate and bananas or anything else you can concoct. Maybe fill this easy skillet bread with some cheddar and apple slices, and a sprinkle of pumpkin spice. As the autumn chill sets in, you may even choose this toasty-warm alternative, even when you have other bread in the house. It’s a not-too-tricky treat that’s sure to enhance your sandwich-craft and become one of those go-to recipes you won’t want to lose!
About the author: Angela works as a copywriter in the education sector and has dabbled in various culinary pursuits. She was the author of The Caledonia Argus’ long-standing weekly food column Thyme Out with Angela and is happy to now join the rotation of food writers with the Fillmore County Journal.
Jamie Oliver’s Speedy Folded Flatbread
¼ cup bread flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt
1 tablespoon plain yogurt
3-4 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon olive oil or butter
filling ingredients of your choice—sweet or savory
Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium-sized bowl. Add the yogurt and enough water to make a mixture somewhere between a slumpy dough and a thick batter.
Place a medium-sized skillet over moderate heat and swirl the olive oil or melt the butter to coat the pan. Scrape the mixture into the hot, greased skillet and spread it to an even thickness. Let the bread cook for several minutes, until the edges are crisping and the center is beginning to firm. Loosen the edges and drizzle a little olive oil around the perimeter if necessary to free the bread from the pan.
Add your choice of filling ingredients over one half of the bread and fold the other half over the filling. Continue to toast, flipping to brown both sides of the sandwich to taste, making sure the dough is completely cooked through. Slip the sandwich onto a plate and allow to cool slightly before serving.
Recipe abridged; find more details—and watch him make it!—at JamieOliver.com.
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