I have never been so relieved to see a wooden beach hut in all my life. Three hours, two wrong ferries, and one spectacular argument with a satnav that insisted Danish roads were merely a suggestion later, I finally rolled up to Købingsmark Strand on Als with a boot full of groceries and a stomach that had started digesting itself somewhere around Middelfart.

The mishap, because there is always one with me, came courtesy of a tub of remoulade. I had stopped at a Netto in Sønderborg to stock up, smugly filling my basket with rye bread, pickled herring, and what I thought was a sensible portion of Denmark's favourite condiment. The jar was roughly the size of a small fire extinguisher. I only discovered this when it escaped its bag on the doorstep of the cabin and bounced down the wooden steps, exploding across the gravel in a yellow mayonnaise Jackson Pollock. A herring gull the size of a terrier materialised from nowhere and began what I can only describe as a religious experience. I stood there, key in hand, watching my dinner plans disappear into a single bird's ecstatic gullet. Welcome to Denmark.

The cabin itself saved the entire expedition. Købingsmark Strand sits in that perfect slice of Als where the Baltic laps against proper sandy beaches and the air smells of pine and salt in roughly equal measure. Mine was one of those classic Scandinavian summer houses, all weathered wood and enormous windows that made me feel slightly guilty about my domestic habits. The kitchen, though. That kitchen was the real revelation. Compact, yes, but equipped with a gas hob that actually worked and enough cookware to attempt my ambitions. I had plans. Grand plans. I was going to cook like a local, eat like a Dane, become one with the Nordic culinary tradition.

My first evening, I walked to the little harbour area near Købingsmark itself, perhaps ten minutes along a path that cut through low dunes and past families doing that effortless Scandinavian outdoor living thing. There is a small seasonal kiosk there, nothing fancy, doing simple fish sandwiches and soft ice in proper Danish fashion. I ate a fried plaice roll with remoulade - yes, I bought more, a sensible size this time - sitting on a bench watching boats that had not moved since the nineties. It was perfect. The fish was fresh enough to make me suspicious of my own cooking before I had even attempted it.

The following morning I cycled into Sønderborg, which is barely three miles and entirely flat if you ignore the one hill that nearly killed me. The farmers market on Perlegade runs Wednesdays and Saturdays, and I arrived with empty panniers and dangerous enthusiasm. Danish markets are not like British ones. Everything is terrifyingly organised. The cheese man had seventeen varieties of Danish blue and looked personally offended when I asked for something mild. I bought smoked mackerel, new potatoes still dusty with soil, a bunch of dill that smelled like summer itself, and something called "spegepølse" that the stallholder insisted I try. It is essentially salami's more interesting cousin, and I ate half of it standing by my bicycle like a peasant.

That evening I attempted my masterpiece. The kitchen had a proper Danish frying pan, heavy enough to use as a shield, and I set about producing stegt flæsk med persillesovs. Fried pork belly with parsley sauce, for the uninitiated. It is not complicated, which is precisely why my version went so wrong. The pork I had bought from a proper butcher on Sønderborg's high street, chatty in that reserved Danish way, was excellent. My control of the heat was not. The first batch went from raw to carbon in approximately forty seconds. The second batch I undercooked out of cowardice. The third, finally, achieved that golden crackling that makes the dish worth attempting, by which point I had used a month's worth of washing-up liquid and developed a twitch. The parsley sauce split because I got ambitious with the butter. I ate it anyway, sat at the little wooden table with the window open to the sea, and it tasted of accomplishment and mild food poisoning that never quite materialised.

The local pub situation, I discovered, requires some explanation. Als does not really do pubs in the British sense. What it has instead is harbour-side restaurants with beer licenses, and the occasional hotel bar that tolerates outsiders. I found my spiritual home at a place in Høruphav, perhaps four miles east, where a converted boathouse served herring plates and Carlsberg to a clientele who all seemed to know each other's business since approximately 1972. I ate pickled herring three ways - curried, creamed, and plain in vinegar - with rye bread and snaps, because when in Rome. The snaps was a mistake. I am not built for midday aquavit, and the cycle back took considerably longer than the journey there, largely because I kept stopping to admire fence posts.

My final attempt at local cooking came on the last evening. I had accumulated ingredients like a magpie with a culinary interest: more of those new potatoes, local lamb from a farm shop near Guderup, wild garlic I had foraged slightly guiltily from the lane behind the cabin. The kitchen and I had reached an understanding by then. I produced a roast that would not shame a Danish grandmother, though it would certainly not impress one either. The lamb was pink, the potatoes were buttery, and I ate it watching the light fade over the Baltic with a glass of wine that had survived the journey despite the satnav's best efforts to shake it to pieces.

I left Købingsmark Strand with my clothes smelling of woodsmoke and my car smelling of the cheese I had forgotten in the boot for six hours. The exploded remoulade stain never entirely left the gravel, a small memorial to my arrival. I had not mastered Danish cooking, not by any measure. But I had eaten well, failed entertainingly, and learned that a proper kitchen in a proper beach hut makes even mediocre efforts feel like proper holidays. The gull, I suspect, would agree.