The trick to putting together delicious and nutritious recipes is knowing one’s own particular tastes. Most people have a vague sense of the tastes they like, but if you have a very detailed sense of the tastes that please you, you are in a much better position to put together ingredients in a dish that ultimately will be very pleasing.
For instance, I’ve discovered that I really really like the following: garlic, onion, slight and subtle curry, fennel, sour/sweet combinations, cooked tomato, walnut/almond/pecan, lemon juice on leafy greens, mint, basil, vanilla, chocolate, cinnamon.
Before I got into learning how to cook, I had no idea that these are the tastes that I crave, so that eating various dishes was at best a haphazard experience.
But now, I can use this self-knowledge to create recipes that, generally speaking, will be outstanding from a taste perspective — not because I got this outstanding recipe from a book but because I created a recipe that matches my personal taste profile.