> the genius of Indian cuisine: making otherwise bland ingredients (chickpeas, lentils, potatoes, spinach, etc.) taste amazing.
How is that different from any other cuisine? Rice, noodles, potatoes, beans, cabbage, fish, meat, chicken all get mixed with spices in almost every cuisine
Of course there are other styles of cooking. Indian cuisine excels at just the complexity of the spice blends they use. Completely the opposite of Italian cuisine which tends to be minimalist in terms of numbers of ingredients. Just a handful of ingredients typically.
As a Dutch person where salt & pepper are considered excessive in some places, quite a contrast. Let's just say I know what unseasoned vegetables and potatoes taste like after they've been boiled to death. Not great.
The comment I responded to didn't mention complexity, only the spicing up bland food.
Also sorry to hear that - boiled vegetables taste amazing to me. Cabbage, onions, broccoli, etc have amazing flavors when you learn to appreciate them. I can enjoy food drowned in spices and sauces, but in my experience "blandness" is often an indication of desensitization rather than an actual lack of flavor, like how people who excessively consume sugar may have trouble appreciating the sweetness in fruits.
