The SatNav gave up somewhere between Rome and nowhere, which is how I found myself reversing down a gravel track in Lazio, convinced I'd either discovered a secret vineyard or was about to become a local legend for all the wrong reasons. Turns out I'd missed the turning for Poggio Catino by roughly half a mile, though in my defence, Italian country lanes have a charming habit of looking identical until you're committed. I finally crunched up the proper drive at half past four, dusty, slightly hysterical, and absolutely starving.

First impressions of the place hit me like a warm plate of cacio e pepe. The villa sat there looking terribly pleased with itself, all honey-coloured stone and terracotta pots that had actually been planted by someone who knew what they were doing. My kitchen, though. That was the revelation. Proper gas hob, wooden worktops with the patina of a thousand holiday dinners, and a fridge that hummed with agricultural confidence. I dumped my bags and immediately drove to the nearest village for supplies before everything shut, because Italian shops operate on a timetable that feels personally designed to catch out the unprepared.

The little alimentari in Poggio Catino itself became my second home. The owner, a woman whose eyebrows conveyed entire novels of scepticism, watched me select tomatoes with the intensity of someone judging an Olympic event. I bought pecorino that smelled like it had been aged in a shepherd's sock, local olive oil in a bottle with no label, and bread that genuinely cracked when I squeezed it. That first evening I attempted bruschetta with my market haul, standing at the kitchen counter with a glass of local white that cost less than a London coffee. The tomatoes were so ripe they practically volunteered for the knife. I ate four pieces, got oil on my shirt, and felt genuinely emotional about a vegetable for the first time since childhood.

The following morning I discovered the Saturday market in a nearby town, which I shall not name because I cannot spell it and because I got spectacularly lost trying to find my car afterwards. I bought artichokes the size of softballs, still attached to their violent purple flowers, and a string of garlic that looked like a prop from a vampire film. The plan was elaborate: carciofi alla romana, slow-braised with mint and garlic, a dish I'd eaten in Rome years ago and never forgotten. The reality involved me wrestling with spiky leaves for forty minutes, discovering that artichokes have a choke that genuinely earns its name, and producing something that tasted magnificent but resembled a crime scene. I ate it at midnight, triumphant and slightly drunk, wearing an apron as my only clothing because the kitchen had become impossibly hot.

By day four I'd established a routine that revolved entirely around eating. Breakfast was cornetti from the bakery, eaten on the terrace with coffee that I made in a moka pot I'd found in a cupboard and initially assembled backwards. Lunch was whatever I'd assembled from the market, typically cheese, cured meats, and tomatoes arranged with increasing pretension. Dinner became my project, my therapy, my mild obsession. I attempted amatriciana with guanciale I'd tracked down after three shops, the proper cured pork cheek that renders down into something almost spiritual. I burned the first batch because I was watching the sunset instead of the pan, which feels like the most Italian mistake a British person could make.

The local supermarket, a Conad in a nearby town, provided my comedy interludes. I spent twenty minutes in the pasta aisle paralysed by choice, eventually selecting six shapes I couldn't identify and one that turned out to be for soup. My self-catering repertoire expanded to include involtini, thin beef rolls stuffed with breadcrumbs and herbs, which I served with roasted peppers that blistered beautifully in the villa's ancient oven. The oven had no temperature markings, just a dial with symbols that might have been Italian, might have been mystical runes. I treated it like a relationship, learning its moods, its hot spots, its tendency to surge without warning.

One evening I invited over a neighbouring couple I'd met at the village bar, a reckless decision fuelled by local red wine and loneliness. I made a ragu that had simmered for six hours, the kind of cooking that fills a house with purpose. The pasta was slightly overcooked because I was talking too much, the salad was just leaves because I'd forgotten to make anything else, but they brought more wine and we ate until midnight. They taught me to say "buon appetito" with proper feeling, not my usual mumbled embarrassment.

My final morning, I made one last trip to the alimentari. The eyebrow woman actually smiled, or perhaps winced, it's difficult to tell with eyebrows that expressive. I bought bread, cheese, and tomatoes for the journey, plus a jar of honey from her cousin's bees that I didn't need but suddenly couldn't live without. I left the villa with oil stains on my clothes, a slightly expanded waistline, and the certain knowledge that I'd spent a week eating better than I had in years, despite my own incompetence. The SatNav failed me again on the way out, naturally, but I didn't mind. I had tomatoes in the passenger seat and time to spare.