To begin, you must know what you want.

Are you looking to make a specific dish? Maybe it's something you've already eaten but never made, a devil's food cake, for instance, or a curry soup. Maybe it's something you've never tasted but only read about, say a Yorkshire pudding or oysters Rockefeller.

Do you need a dish to fill out a menu you're devising? The need could be nutritional. You already have leftover beets and onions to make into a thick, chunky soup; you have pears to poach for dessert; but where's the green vegetable? You could need a change of texture or color or temperature. The main dish is a garlicky bean puree and dessert is apricot custard; help, you need something crunchy and brightly colored. You could need nothing more specific than one more dish. Spaghetti with clam and spinach sauce for the main, apple dumplings for dessert, one more dish will make a meal. Do the other dishes in the menu incline you to a specific region? If the first course is Spanish and the dessert is Portuguese, a Swedish main dish might sit strangely.

Have you a specific ingredient you want to use? Perhaps something is just coming into season, like winter apples or the first cherries in July. Perhaps, if you're like me, you have indulged yourself with an impulse buy at the grocery store and now you need to figure out what to do with, say, white asparagus, or a head of endive. Perhaps you've already made the two recipes you know for broccoli raab, the one with small pasta the other with tiny chunks of sausage as a first course, but you still have half a pound to use up. Perhaps you're working on your life list of vegetables and the time has come to disentangle chicory from endive.

Have you a piece of equipment you'd like to use? Maybe a shiny new waffle iron showed up under your Christmas tree. Maybe you finally decided to give an olive pitter a try. Maybe the beloved great-aunt who gave you a fish poacher is coming to supper.

Does the dish have any special constraints? Must it for instance travel well, in a lunchbox? Is there a refrigerator where you're taking it? An oven? Is it to be eaten standing up, or sitting on chairs and couches with no tables? Are you eating indoors or out?

Who's going to be eating it -- family, friends, strangers? How many of them are there? What do you know about their requirements and preferences? A dish for a potluck, for instance, does well to avoid notorious allergens like nuts and shellfish. Vegetarians and vegans are no longer rare; raw-foods devotees and fruitarians are not yet common but don't count on their absence.

How much time and effort are you willing to expend? Maybe you're looking for a lightning-fast recipe to make after work and before play rehearsal. Maybe you don't mind if a dish blurbles away for six hours in the oven as long as you don't have to keep checking up on it. Think about your workflow requirements. Does the dish require advance work, like a frozen dessert? Or do you simply prefer to make the dish the day before and reheat it on the day it's to be served? Maybe you're working on a specific kitchen skill, like poaching, for instance, or the Chinese rolling cut, and you want another chance to practice. Will you have help in making the dish or are you on your own?

How much do you want to spend? Are you at the end of the paycheck, the land of beans and rice? Or can you afford to spend some money for an unusual ingredient, like argan oil or blood oranges?

What do you want the dish to say? The more you cook, the more you can communicate with food. Welcome home. Congratulations. We made it through. I've been thinking of you. How good it is to be together. Let's have an adventure. I'm sorry. Thank you.

And it's always important to consult your appetites. What are you in the mood for? What flavors and aromas and textures do you want? I love to cook in part because the passage from longing to realization is so swift. If I want a new black dress or a clean second-hand copy of Sylvia Townsend Warner's Kingdoms of Elfin, I have a wait in store. But if I want tuna noodle casserole, I can have it in twenty minutes. If I want a butterscotch brownie, I can have it in under an hour. (I accept that since the time to satisfaction is so short I had better also keep on hand materials for a big green salad, cucumber pickles, and cut fruit to balance out my casserole and cookies.)

Jotting down your requirements before you begin to look for a recipe never does any harm. I love to get deliriously lost in a tangle of recipes and cookbooks, but sooner or later one must get down to business. I want:

a whole grain dish

serving 6 with leftovers

that I can cook the day before

to serve as a side for a Middle Eastern fish

and my husband is lactose-intolerant

and I don't have anybody to help me cook

Or I want:

a fruit dessert

serving 3

that is easy enough for my five-year-old to make without lots of help from me

requires no sharp knives

and doesn't cost an arm and a leg so I won't get nervous that he'll ruin it

Or I want:

a Mediterranean first course

serving 4

that will keep in the refrigerator all week

to use if I have to stay late at work one night and I want the family to eat something healthy instead of chips

Or I want:

a hearty picnic salad

serving 2

that uses artichokes, my partner's favorite vegetable