I'm not sure if this qualifies for what you're talking about but when I was first learning to cook I found cooking the 4 Classic Roman Pasta dishes to be a really great learning experience. It does a really good job teaching you about developing / creating an emulsion-based sauce, which is a really good foundational skill. They're all fairly simple recipes, but are difficult to master and always impress!
If these are too simple, I would say dive into the meat sauce world. Kenji has a great easy-ish recipe for bolognese that's pretty great.
