What helped me when learning to cook vegan was focusing on the basics.
I studied a few recipes (such as Indian curry) and identified the fundamental ingredients (onions, garlic, ginger, tomatoes, spices, and protein), creating a list of non-basic spices and other potential ingredients.
I mastered the process of this basic recipe: browning the onions with cumin and bay leaf, no salt, adding garlic and the remaining spices, introducing tomatoes with salt, then adding vegetable stock and protein, and cooking until finished.
From there, I began experimenting with additional spices, ingredients, vegetables (almost anything works), and proteins (beans, lentils, peas, etc.)
Always stick to the basics. Many recipes out there are needlessly complex. After all, you can make almost anything taste delicious with just onions, fat, salt, and pepper.
I'd recommend the book 'Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat' – I've only skimmed it, but it seems to ring true.
One of the fundamental parts of curry making is cooking the spices until the oil separates - that is until all the water boils off, and the tomato skins blacken. This is usually not explained terribly well in written recipes.
