Hi @Huw_Thomas, welcome to the Asana Community Forum!
In order to find your projects you will need to type at least one word and you will receive some suggestions. The project field is optional, you can create the task and it will be added to your My Tasks list. Then you will be able to add it to a project in Asana.
We don’t have any immediate plans for this feature but I’ll let you know if we have any news. Thanks for sharing your feedback!