I understand that youtube recommendations can be a very useful tool, but I definitely do not want depend on any opaque recommendation system for my daily media consumption or whatever.

Given the existence of "Subscriptions" page I don't really understand the problem. Do you really want to consume regularly from the sources you didn't explicitly "verify" yourself i.e. subscribed to?

I simple use the Unhook browser plugin which hides the Home, Trending, recommendations side bar, comments, etc. for me so I only have the Subscriptions page, and the search bar. Makes the youtube experience SO MUCH better.