So making a good meat-based meal is pretty easy. If you really like cooking and challenging yourself, try doing that with ingredients we're often not as excited about like vegetable, tofu or other meat substitutes.
Really? I can cook haricots vert perfectly on point, and "stick to the wall" capellini, all day following a rote recipe, but doing a brisket just right is a lot harder.
Any stoner can make a respectable (though cumin-overwrought) lentil soup that would wow the local hemp crowd, and Tofukey comes in a ready-to-cook box, but putting together something that involves a delicate animal protein, like a "correct" version of ANY of four of the five Mother Sauces (and even #5, Sauce Tomate, is usually made with a roux in continental cuisine) takes a tremendous amount of culinary skill.
Burn the skin off of your aubergine on the stovetop, without benefit of a pan, and it's ready for culinary accolades,
overcook a cauliflower, and it tastes like slightly softer, but still very edible, cauliflower.
Burn a piece of sole, and it won't make it out of the pan, much less stay on your fork, and God help you if you take a flank steak past a "just right" rare.
sorry, but I am inclined to respectfully disagree with your assertion.