Good morning. I had a dream I was in Dan Tanas in Los Angeles and the place was packed. There was no coronavirus pandemic, just sweating martinis and jovial laughter, and I persuaded my guest, to order the shrimp parmigiana: best thing on the menu, exactly the sort of thing youd never make at home. The shrimp was delicious in my dream, but those words at home brought reality into my consciousness. Things went circular. I woke up in a sweat.

I miss complicated restaurant dishes, the ones a single cook works on for the whole shift: quick-frying the shrimp in batter, napping it in tomato sauce and mozz, running the dish under the salamander broiler so that it goes leopard-spotted at exactly the moment the shrimps perfectly cooked. You can make that 30 times an evening for a couple months and shrug: Its easy to make. Do it once at home, and youll see the lie in the sentiment. Its not.

So Ill wait for my shrimp parmigiana, my double consomm, my Peking duck. Well be able to eat those again, someday, I hope. In the meantime: Simplicity, ease, deliciousness squared.

Its neat. Setting yourself up for a lo-fi night of cooking oven-roasted chicken shawarma, say, with a side dish of charred shallots with labneh can actually hint at some of the joys we experienced in restaurants, when we could go to them. A vegan cheeseburger, courtesy of J. Kenji Lpez-Alt, could remind you of In-N-Out, back when you ate meat, back when you could sit in a booth at the shop on Sepulveda near LAX, first or final meal in Los Angeles. A Screaming Eagle cheesesteak sub might take you back to college dining halls, to how you could eat then, as if for two people or three. Steak au poivre from David Tanis? Is this now Raouls?

There are other recipes Id like to make real soon. Jerrelle Guys any-fruit drop biscuits (above), for instance. And Davids pasta with fresh tomato sauce and ricotta. Not to mention Melissa Clarks pasta with fried lemons and chile flakes. I could do those back to back!

(By the way, none of this is to say a cooking project cant be enjoyable right now. Angela Dimayugas beef empanadas prove that plain. So, too, Marcus Samuelssons quinoa with broccoli, cauliflower and toasted coconut, which is only laborious in the shopping. Try those, as well.)

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And please get in touch if anything gets squirrelly along the way, in your cooking or our technology. Were at cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you.

Now, its nothing to do with buttermilk or hand pies, and I wont bother you with the back story that led me to the site, but via The New York Public Library I came across this digitized collection of old New York magazines, dating back to the titles birth in 1968, another watershed difficult year for America. There is some really good browsing and reading to be had there.

Speaking of magazines, Essence turned 50 this year, and its editors have put together a marvelous hub that lets you explore its history through the lens of its covers and cover stars.

Finally, in case you missed it, heres A.O. Scott on Wallace Stegner, the first installment in a series hes writing for The Times on American writers, some well known, some forgotten, some overlooked. Its very good. Ill be back on Wednesday.

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What to Cook Right Now - The New York Times