I'd set off from Pula Airport with the sort of confidence that only comes from having glanced at Google Maps precisely once, which is how I ended up driving three laps of a roundabout near Novigrad while my hire car's sat nav calmly suggested I "turn around when possible." My other half was navigating with a printed screenshot, because of course we'd failed to download offline maps, and by the time we spotted the weathered stone wall and iron gate of Stancijeta, I'd developed a genuinely impressive hatred of Croatian roundabouts.

The property itself stopped any lingering irritation dead. A restored Istrian stone house with that particular honeyed colour you only seem to get in this corner of Croatia, sitting among olive trees with a terrace that looked made for evening wine. We tumbled out of the car, stretched legs cramped from my enthusiastic wrong-turning, and immediately noticed the outdoor kitchen. A proper wood-fired grill, a rustic stone sink, and enough counter space to suggest serious cooking ambitions. I announced my intention to become a sort of Istrian barbecue deity for the week. My partner raised an eyebrow with the weariness of someone who'd endured my previous "becoming a deity" phases, most notably my brief obsession with sourdough that produced something resembling building materials.

The first evening demanded no cooking heroics, thankfully. We wandered into Novigrad's old town, barely ten minutes away, and found Konoba Mandrac. I ordered grilled sardines because it felt obligatory, and they arrived with that perfect char, served with nothing more than lemon, olive oil, and a pile of blitva - Swiss chard with potatoes, the staple I'd soon become properly obsessed with. The wine was a local Malvazija, crisp and somehow tasting of the stones and sea nearby. We ate slowly, watching fishing boats in the harbour, and I made my first of many mental notes about buying fish at the morning market.

That market, encountered the next day, nearly finished me. Novigrad's small morning fish market operates with the beautiful chaos of places where everyone knows what they're doing except the tourists. I pointed at something silver and gleaming, asked "fresh?" in my useless phrasebook Croatian, and received a look of such magnificent contempt that I immediately bought half a kilo of sardines I hadn't planned on. The vegetable stall nearby sold tomatoes that actually smelled of tomatoes, which feels worth remarking upon when you live in Britain. I loaded up with peppers, onions, and a bunch of herbs I couldn't identify but liked the look of.

Back at Stancijeta, I attempted my first proper meal. The wood-fired grill required approximately forty minutes of my life and most of my dignity to get going, during which I produced smoke in quantities that suggested I'd accidentally discovered a signalling system for distressed maritime vessels. My partner retreated indoors with a book and what I suspect was deliberate deafness. When flames finally emerged, I grilled those sardines with the intensity of someone proving a point, made a rough peperonata with the peppers, and produced a salad of tomatoes and onions so simple it barely qualified as cooking. We ate at the stone table on the terrace as the light went golden, and I experienced that particular holiday satisfaction of food eaten slowly, wine poured generously, nowhere particular to be.

The following days developed a rhythm I hadn't expected. Morning market for whatever looked good, often returning with more than planned because I'd been seduced by some unfamiliar cheese or a particularly persuasive fishmonger. Lunch became a casual affair of prsut - the local air-dried ham, less famous than Dalmatian versions but excellent - with cheese and bread from a bakery near the harbour. The serious cooking happened in evenings, when I'd wrestle with the grill and gradually improve, though "improve" here means progressing from maritime distress signals to merely concerning levels of smoke.

I attempted fuzi one afternoon, the traditional Istrian pasta shape, bought fresh from a small producer in Novigrad. My sauce of wild asparagus and egg, based on something I'd eaten at a konoba, separated into something academically interesting but not appetising. We ate it anyway, on the terrace, with more Malvazija and the particular laughter that comes from shared culinary disaster. The next attempt worked better. The one after that, better still. By week's end I was producing grilled squid with reasonable competence, though I say so myself, and a tomato sauce that actually tasted of something.

We found a tiny place called Konoba Bukara, tucked down a side street, where an elderly woman made pasta by hand each morning and served it with truffle in season. I ate mine with a simple meat sauce, watching her work, and understood something about why I'd been so determined to cook myself. It wasn't about competence, really. It was about participation, about the pleasure of markets and fires and slow evenings, about being somewhere rather than merely passing through.

On our final night I grilled sea bass, stuffed with lemon and herbs from a pot I'd bought at the market. The fire lit without drama, which felt like graduation. We ate with our fingers, because we'd run out of proper manners somewhere around day three, and watched the last light on the olive trees. I'd come with ambitions of becoming something, some version of a competent cook in a beautiful place. What I found was simpler: the pleasure of trying, of occasional success and frequent smoke, of meals that mattered because of where and how they were eaten.

The sardines on that first evening, bought in confusion and grilled in hope, set a pattern I hadn't expected. Not perfection, but presence. Not expertise, but engagement. We left with olive oil in our luggage, a jar of honey from a market stall, and the particular satisfaction of having eaten our way through a week with something approaching intention.