I should have known the holiday was going to be interesting when I packed the car at half past four in the morning and realised, somewhere around the M25, that I'd left the entire cool bag on the kitchen worktop. There we were, me and my other half, heading for the ferry with nothing but a packet of mints and some slightly squashed Jaffa Cakes between us. By the time we rolled off at Hirtshals, twelve hours later, I would have happily eaten the ferry timetable.

The drive up to Blokhus Strand took us through that flat, wide-open Jutland landscape where the sky seems to take up three-quarters of everything. We found the place easily enough, a tidy little holiday home tucked among similar properties, all pine cladding and sensible Danish design. The key was in the lockbox as promised, and I made a beeline for the kitchen before even looking at the bedrooms. Priorities.

The kitchen was properly equipped, which was just as well given our predicament. I had grand plans of cooking elaborate Danish meals, channeling my inner Nordic chef. The reality, that first evening, was pasta with a jar of supermarket sauce from the Fakta in Blokhus town. I stood there in the aisle, starving and overwhelmed, grabbing things that looked vaguely familiar. Some strange brown cheese. A tube of something called "leverpostej" that I later learned was liver pate. A packet of rye bread that had the density of a house brick.

We ate on the little terrace as the light stretched out forever, that northern summer evening where it never quite gets dark. The pasta was fine. The brown cheese was not. I have since made my peace with this.

The next morning, properly rested, I walked into Blokhus proper and found the bakery. Now this was more like it. Danish pastries in Denmark, it turns out, are just called pastries, and they are magnificent. I bought three for research purposes, plus a loaf of proper sourdough and some local butter that actually tasted of something. The woman behind the counter spoke better English than I do, which was humbling, and directed me to the fishmonger round the corner.

That fishmonger became my spiritual home for the week. Fresh plaice, still firm and gleaming. Smoked mackerel that needed nothing more than rye bread and a squeeze of lemon. I bought prawns by the kilo, still salty from the sea, and ate them on the beach with my fingers like a seagull. My other half, ever patient, watched me descend into full food obsession with the quiet acceptance of someone who has seen this before.

I attempted to cook the plaice that evening, following some vague memory of a recipe. The kitchen filled with smoke. The butter browned too far. I served it anyway, with boiled potatoes and a dill sauce that split slightly, and we ate it with the windows open and the smell of pine coming in. It was, in its imperfect way, completely wonderful.

The local pubs and eating spots in Blokhus itself are unpretentious places, mostly catering to Danish families on holiday rather than trying to be anything fancy. I found a place doing open sandwiches, smorrebrod, that put my efforts to shame. Dense rye bread, buttered thick, topped with pickled herring and soft-boiled egg, or roast beef with remoulade and crispy fried onions. I ate two and could barely move afterwards.

One evening we walked to a beachfront place, nothing more than a shack with plastic chairs and a view of the North Sea. They served fried fish and chips, Danish style, with remoulade rather than vinegar, and we drank cold Tuborg and watched children play in the sand as the sun finally dipped low. It was simple and perfect and I cannot imagine wanting anything more elaborate.

I did try to visit the local market, held weekly in Blokhus, but got the day wrong and arrived to find an empty car park. I stood there with my reusable bags, feeling foolish, then walked back via the supermarket and bought more of that excellent butter and some local strawberries that tasted like actual strawberries. Sometimes the backup plan is the better plan.

By the end of the week, my cooking had improved marginally. I made a respectable fish soup one evening, heavy on the dill, served with the last of the sourdough. We finished every market cheese I'd accumulated, plus a jar of local honey that tasted of heather. I never did crack the brown cheese, but I made my peace with that too.

The journey home was longer, somehow, with a stop at a service station in Germany where I ate a sausage that I regretted for three hundred kilometres. But that is another story, and not one that belongs in the pleasant haze of that North Jutland week, where the food was simple, the portions were generous, and my ambitions in the kitchen were slowly, gently, brought down to earth.