I have never been so pleased to see a gravel driveway in all my life. After six hours of driving from Bologna airport, during which I managed to get spectacularly lost on what I can only describe as a goat track masquerading as a road, I finally rolled up to our holiday home in Loiano. The sat-nav had given up somewhere near Monghidoro, my partner had fallen into that particular doze that is somehow more judgmental than actual words, and I had eaten an entire packet of taralli out of stress. The mishap, you ask? I had confidently filled the hire car with petrol instead of diesel. Cue a very expensive tow truck, a lot of apologetic hand gestures at a garage in the middle of nowhere, and the realisation that my GCSE Italian does not stretch to explaining automotive incompetence.

But there we were, and the place smelled of rosemary and woodsmoke, and suddenly nothing else mattered.

The kitchen, I should say, was the heart of it. Terracotta floors, slightly wonky wooden beams, and a cooker that looked like it had seen action in several decades. I unpacked our bags with the frantic energy of a man who needed to make amends through food. We had stopped at a supermarket on the outskirts, which I now realise was a tactical error. The real treasure, I discovered the next morning, was the weekly market in Loiano itself. Thursday mornings, the piazza fills with stalls that look like they have been there since before anyone can remember. I bought tomatoes that actually smelled of tomatoes, which feels like a ridiculous thing to get emotional about until you have spent years eating supermarket ones that taste of polite regret.

That first evening, I attempted a ragu. The kitchen had a proper heavy-bottomed pan, the sort that makes you feel like a serious person even when you are not. I browned the mince, I softened the onions, I opened a bottle of Sangiovese and put some in the sauce and rather more in myself. The thing about self-catering in Emilia Romagna is that you are simultaneously in the best place in the world to cook Italian food and the worst place to get away with doing it badly. The local standard is intimidating. I once watched an elderly woman in the market select parmesan with the focused intensity of a jeweller assessing diamonds. She caught me staring and said something that my brain translated as "you are not worthy," though she may simply have been commenting on the weather.

My ragu was adequate. My partner said it was delicious, but she is kind and also wanted me to drive to the coast later that week. The second attempt was better. I bought fresh tagliatelle from a pastaio in the next village, the kind of place where a man in a white coat emerges from a back room with flour on his forehead and hands you something that will cook in ninety seconds. The difference between dried and fresh, when the fresh is actually fresh, is the difference between a postcard and actually being somewhere.

By day four I had developed a routine. Morning coffee on the terrace, watching the mist lift off the hills. Then to the market for whatever looked good, which was everything. I bought pecorino from a shepherd who had driven down from the Apennines, his cheese wrapped in cloth and slightly sweaty. I bought porcini mushrooms the size of my fist and worried about whether I was qualified to cook them. I bought bread from a van that honked its horn to announce itself, which is simply how bread should be sold.

The kitchen became my laboratory and my confessional. I made crescentine, the local fried bread, and set off the smoke alarm. I attempted tortellini in brodo using stock from bones I begged from the butcher, who looked at me with the weary patience of a man who has seen many British holidaymakers have similar enthusiasms. The broth was cloudy. It tasted of effort and sincerity, which are not nothing.

What I loved, I think, was the slowness of it all. The way shopping became an event rather than a chore. The way lunch stretched to three hours because we had bought too much wine and the light on the terrace was too perfect to leave. The way cooking dinner started at four in the afternoon with a glass of something and a lot of chopping. Back home I throw a ready meal in the oven and watch something on my phone. Here, I watched olive oil heat in a pan and felt genuinely excited about it.

On our last night I made a simple pasta with butter and sage from the garden, plus that pecorino. It took fifteen minutes. We ate it outside as the sun went down, and I thought about how I would try to hold onto this when I got home. I knew I would fail, but the trying felt important.

I still think about that kitchen. The slightly temperamental gas hob. the wooden spoon worn to a curve that matched no hand but someone's. The way the light came in late afternoon and made everything golden and forgiving, even my cooking.