I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I tried to unlock the wrong door at Tengslemark Lyng Strand. There I was, wrestling with the key in what I thought was our beach house, muttering about Danish engineering, when a very polite woman in slippers opened from inside and informed me in perfect English that my actual cottage was three doors down. The key had been working fine; my brain, less so. Jet lag and a ferry from Puttgarden will do that to a person.

The drive up through Odsherred had already set my stomach rumbling. Rolling fields, that particular flat Danish light, and signs pointing toward smoked fish and roadside farm shops. By the time I finally found the correct door, I was ready to eat my own shoe. The cottage itself was charming in that straightforward Scandinavian way, but I barely noticed the pine panelling or the view toward the Kattegat. My eyes went straight to the kitchen.

I had grand plans, of course. I'd packed a Jamie Oliver cookbook and visions of myself preparing elegant seafood suppers. The reality, that first evening, was rather more basic. The local Netto in Asnaes had provided me with Danish bacon, some rather excellent butter, and a loaf of rugbrod that I initially mistook for a building material. I fried everything together in a pan too small for ambition, set off the smoke alarm, and ate my creation on the little wooden deck watching the light fade. It was absolutely delicious, though I say so myself, and the single can of Tuborg I found at the back of the fridge helped considerably.

Morning brought proper exploration, and with it, the discovery that I am not a natural at Danish breakfast construction. The cottage had one of those proper coffee machines, the sort that hisses and judges you. I managed coffee eventually, then cycled into Hojby on a bike that weighed approximately the same as a small car. There I found a baker, Bageriet in the high street, where I pointed hopefully at various pastries and emerged with something containing remonce and another thing with poppy seeds that I ate immediately on a bench, flakes cascading down my jacket like edible snow.

Lunch became a pilgrimage. I'd read about the smokehouses along the coast, and Rorvig did not disappoint. The place smelled of alder wood and centuries of practice. I bought far too much smoked mackerel, some herring I had no immediate plan for, and a tub of something creamy and dill-scented that I later discovered was meant to accompany potatoes. I ate the mackerel straight from the paper with my fingers, sitting on the harbour wall, feeling thoroughly pleased with myself and slightly guilty about the herring's uncertain future.

Evenings required strategy. The cottage had a barbecue, and I was determined to master it. The first attempt involved local sausages from a farm shop near Nykobing, which I managed to char on the outside while remaining suspiciously pink within. My partner, who had arrived by then and observed this performance with the patience of a saint, suggested finishing them in the oven. I resisted, then relented, then admitted she was right. We ate them with a simple salad and new potatoes boiled with the good Danish butter, drinking a bottle of supermarket wine on the deck as the sky did that prolonged Scandinavian fade to grey.

We found our local, eventually. A place in Asnaes that did simple food properly, where the barman remembered our order on the second visit and the snaps selection was taken seriously. I tried akvavit for the first time, which I can only describe as an experience that starts with caraway and ends with questioning your life choices. The food was straightforward, hearty, exactly what was needed after a day of cycling into headwinds.

The herring, incidentally, met its end in a failed attempt at pickled herring preparation that I will not describe in detail. Some things are best left in holiday memory as learning experiences. The rugbrod, however, I came to genuinely love, especially with good cheese and that remarkable butter, eaten simply with coffee as the morning mist lifted off the water.

By the end of the week, my cooking had improved marginally, my expectations had adjusted helpfully, and I had developed what I can only describe as a deep emotional attachment to Danish dairy products. We ate our final meal back at the smokehouse, properly this time, at outdoor tables with blankets and that particular contentment that comes from doing very little very well.

I never did master that coffee machine, mind. Some doors, it seems, are not meant to be opened.