I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I put the postcode into my sat nav and it directed me to a field with one very unimpressed cow. Three hours from the ferry at Rodby, and I was already having a standoff with Danish livestock. Turns out I'd typed one digit wrong. Classic me. Another twenty minutes of winding country lanes later, I finally spotted the sign for Liseleje Strand and breathed a sigh of relief that smelled distinctly of the sea air and, if I'm honest, the slightly overripe banana I'd eaten somewhere near Vordingborg.

The cottage itself was one of those charming wooden affairs, all pale cladding and big windows that practically begged you to sit with a cuppa and watch the world go by. I dumped my bags with the theatrical exhaustion of someone who'd done absolutely nothing strenuous, then immediately did what any sensible person does on arrival: I checked the kitchen. NovaSol hadn't lied. There was a proper cooker, decent knives, and enough pots and pans to attempt something ambitious. I had plans, you see. I'd packed a Danish cookbook I'd bought on a whim in Copenhagen three years ago and never opened. This was going to be my culinary awakening. I was going to eat like a local, cook like a local, probably develop a slight herring dependency.

The first morning, I walked into Liseleje proper, which took all of twelve minutes at my pace and that included stopping to admire someone's particularly enthusiastic rose garden. The village has this lovely understated feel, nothing twee or forced, just practical Danish coastal living. I found the local supermarket, a SuperBrugsen that looked modest from outside but revealed itself to be a treasure trove once I got past the automatic doors. I stood in front of the fish counter like a man in an art gallery, completely overwhelmed by choice. The assistant, whose English was embarrassingly better than my Danish, took pity on me and suggested some fresh plaice. I also bought rugbrod, that dense dark rye bread that looks like it could survive a nuclear winter, and a tub of something called leverpostej that I later discovered was liver pate and not, as I'd assumed, a type of dessert.

My first cooking attempt was ambitious and, with hindsight, foolish. I decided to make a proper Danish fish supper, complete with remoulade I'd read about. The plaice was straightforward enough, pan-fried with butter and lemon, but I got distracted by the view from the kitchen window, a proper sweep of sand dunes and the Kattegat beyond, and managed to reduce my potatoes to something approaching mush. I salvaged them with more butter than is medically advisable and called it "crushed." The remoulade was shop-bought because I am not a complete masochist. I ate on the little wooden deck with a glass of fairly mediocre white wine, watching the light change over the water, and felt genuinely pleased with myself. The herring would come later. I needed to work up to that.

The local pub scene, such as it is, centres around a couple of proper establishments where locals actually go. I found myself at Liseleje Badehotel's restaurant one evening, not strictly a pub but with a bar area that had the right feel, all low lighting and the gentle murmur of conversation. I ate pickled herring there for the first time, accompanied by snaps, which the bartender explained was not optional if I wanted the full experience. He was not wrong about the combination, though I maintain no spirit should be served in such small glasses when one is nervously confronting fermented fish. The herring was surprisingly lovely, sweet and sharp and nothing like the aggressive thing I'd imagined. I had seconds. The bartender looked vindicated.

I became slightly obsessed with the bakery in the nearby town of Helsinge, which I reached by cycling along paths through proper Danish beech woodland. The smell of fresh wienerbrod hit me from twenty metres away. I developed a serious pastry habit over that week, returning with paper bags full of cinnamon swirls and tebirkes, those poppy-seed affairs that leave you picking black specks from your teeth for hours. Worth it, every time. I'd sit on the beach with my haul, watching Danish families doing that effortless outdoor living thing, children wrapped in wool blankets, parents with thermoses of coffee, everyone properly dressed for the weather rather than pretending it's warmer than it is.

My most humbling moment came when I attempted to recreate a proper Danish smorrebrod. I'd bought beautiful fresh prawns from a little fishmonger who operated from what looked like a converted garage, his English as limited as my Danish, our transaction conducted largely through enthusiastic gesturing. Back at the cottage, I carefully arranged my ingredients, photographed my creation from three angles, bit into it with anticipation, and immediately understood that I had fundamentally misunderstood the bread-to-topping ratio. The rye bread, so dense and assertive, completely overwhelmed everything else. It was like eating a savoury doorstop. I ate it anyway, because waste is a sin, but I did so with the quiet dignity of someone who knows they have been humbled by a sandwich.

The local market, held on Saturday mornings near the harbour, became my ritual. Small but perfectly formed, with stalls selling local honey that tasted of whatever the bees had found in the coastal heathland, cheeses from farms I could probably cycle to, and vegetables that actually smelled of something. I bought too much, always, drawn in by friendly stallholders who seemed genuinely pleased I was attempting to cook rather than just photograph their produce. One woman selling apples talked me through three different varieties suitable for different purposes, her patience with my questions making me feel briefly like a competent adult.

By the end of the week, my cooking had improved marginally, my waistline had not, and I had developed what I can only describe as a rugbrod dependency. I packed the untouched Danish cookbook with slightly less optimism than I'd arrived with, but with something better: the knowledge that food tastes different when you've slightly failed to prepare it yourself, when you've chatted with the person who caught it or grew it or baked it, when you eat it looking at the sea with butter on your chin and no particular plans beyond tomorrow's breakfast. The banana incident with the cow felt like weeks ago. I drove back to the ferry full of herring and contentment, already planning my return and, crucially, which digit not to mistype.