Like the others, I can get a pretty good idea if im going to like hit or not by reading the recipe in advanced ( unless it's an ingredient Im not familiar with). Usually my wife will send me recipes to kind of approve cause she has no ability at all to do this. Every now and then I get caught by surprise both ways. Some I like more than I thought I would, and another that I thought I'd like but wasnt worth the effort.
One dish that kinda fooled me was a Chinese Tofu with green beans recipe that my wife asked if I thought it would be good. I looked at it and it didnt impress me so I passed on it. There was onion powder and garlic powder , maple syrup ... Usually when I make Stir fry like dishes the fresh stuff, not powdered. Anyway, we had an abundance of string beans from the garden, so my wife decided to make the dish for dinner. To my surprise, it was very good. Well above average, to the point that now it is one of our go to string bean recipes during the summer. Im glad she took it upon herself not to listen to me.
Another dish I recently made was a chickpea - spinach soup. I was up in the middle of the night and came across the recipe online. It was one of those recipes that they talk up really big ( it's the greatest recipe, unique flavors .....). Out of curiosity I clicked on the recipe, and it had so few simple ingredients, I thought it wouldn't be bad, but nothing exceptional. Anyway, I happened to have half bag of spinach I needed to get rid of before it spoiled, and ShopRite jus recently had its can-can sale, so I have more cans of chickpeas than I know what to do with. I decided to make it more because of the spinach than anything else. To my surprise, even though it was just a few , simple, very familiar ingredients , they went together so well. I was completely surprised how much I liked it. ( I had to make the recipe based on memory, cause I had fallen asleep after seeing it, and never book marked it).