I have always believed that the best way to understand a place is through your stomach, which is why my recent stay at Kaprije Kaprije in Dalmatia, Croatia, turned into something of a culinary pilgrimage. Though I should probably start with the journey, because no good food story begins without a small disaster.

We flew into Split and hired a car, which felt terribly sensible until I realised I had been navigating us towards a completely different island for the best part of an hour. My partner sat in silence, watching the Croatian coastline pass by, occasionally sighing in that particular way that suggests he was choosing his words carefully. "Just checking," he said eventually, "but are we meant to be heading towards Italy?" We were not. We were meant to be heading towards the ferry to Kaprije, a tiny island where our stone villa awaited. I turned us around with what dignity I could muster, and we made the ferry with minutes to spare, me clutching a petrol station sandwich and vowing never to navigate again.

The villa itself was everything the website had promised and more. Thick stone walls, a terrace that caught the afternoon sun, and a kitchen that looked like it had seen decades of proper cooking. I ran my hand along the wooden worktop and felt immediately ambitious. Tonight, I decided, we would cook like locals.

This ambition lasted precisely until our first trip to the island's tiny market, where I pointed at various fish with the confidence of someone who had never cleaned a fish in her life. The woman behind the counter spoke limited English, and my Croatian extends to "hvala" and "pivo," which is "thank you" and "beer" respectively. Between us we established that I wanted three sea bream, and that I had absolutely no idea what to do with them. She handed them over with a look of what I can only describe as charitable scepticism.

Back at the villa, I watched a YouTube video on my phone with the intensity of a surgeon preparing for a complex operation. The fish, mercifully, had been gutted. Everything else was down to me. I stuffed them with lemon and herbs from the terrace garden, drizzled olive oil that I had bought from a man whose entire farm appeared to be operated from his garage, and grilled them over charcoal. They were, against all reasonable expectation, magnificent. We ate them on the terrace with our fingers, watching the sun drop into the Adriatic, and I felt genuinely proud in a way that I rarely do when following recipes at home.

The next morning I attempted a more modest breakfast. Local bread, still warm from somewhere, with prsut and cheese. The prsut, Croatia's answer to prosciutto, was unlike anything I had tasted before. Drier, somehow more intense, with a sweetness that caught at the back of your throat. I ate far too much of it, standing at the kitchen counter in my pyjamas, making noises that my partner suggested were inappropriate for a shared holiday property.

For lunch we walked to what the islanders simply call "the restaurant," though there are a few. This one sat right on the water, plastic chairs and checked tablecloths, the kind of place that would be unbearably trendy in London but here was simply where you ate. We ordered grilled squid, which arrived looking exactly like squid, tentacles and all, and a bowl of black risotto that stained our teeth for hours afterwards. The wine was local, white, and cost less than a coffee back home. We drank two bottles and staggered back to the villa for a nap that lasted until dinner time.

Dinner that evening required no cooking, which was fortunate given our condition. We found a konoba, one of those traditional taverns that Dalmatia does so well, and ate pasticada, beef slow-cooked in wine and prunes until it fell apart at the touch of a fork. The owner came to check on us, saw our empty plates, and brought us rakija on the house. It was homemade, he explained, from his grandmother's recipe. It tasted like fire and hospitality and possibly regret, the next morning.

By our fourth day I had developed what I can only describe as delusions of culinary competence. I attempted to recreate the black risotto, having secured squid ink from a fisherman who communicated entirely through gestures and laughter. The result was not black so much as aggressively grey, and the texture suggested I had fundamentally misunderstood some basic principle of rice cookery. We ate it anyway, because I am stubborn and because wasting food feels criminal when you have watched someone pull it from the sea that morning. It was edible. That is the most generous thing I can say.

What saved the evening was the cheese. I had been to the market again, where an old woman sold me something she described, through translation app and pointing, as being from her own goats. It was sharp and crumbly and tasted of the island itself, of salt and herbs and whatever goats eat on rocky Mediterranean hillsides. We ate it with figs from a tree overhanging the villa's terrace, and I forgave myself the risotto entirely.

Our final night, we returned to the water's edge restaurant. The owner remembered us, which felt like an achievement, and recommended a fish we had not tried. "Very fresh," he said, "this morning." It came simply grilled, with potatoes and Swiss chard, and I understood finally that this is the Dalmatian way. Not complexity but quality, not technique but trust in what the land and sea provide. I have cooked more elaborate meals at home. I have rarely eaten better.

We finished with rozata, a local custard pudding that I have since attempted twice and never matched. The ferry back to the mainland left early, and I stood on deck watching Kaprije shrink behind us, already planning what I would cook when we returned. My partner, wisely, said nothing about my navigation. Some lessons, I think, are better learned through food than through maps.