I have never been more grateful for a sat nav than I was driving down to our Fondi holiday let last spring. My partner had insisted we take the scenic route from Rome, which sounded lovely in theory. Three hours later, we were lost somewhere between a motorway services and what I can only describe as an aggressive roundabout that appeared to have no exit. I had been navigating using my phone, which decided at the crucial moment to update its software. We missed our turning twice, argued about whether to ask directions from a man walking three dogs, and finally rolled up to the property with me clutching a lukewarm espresso from a petrol station and a very bruised ego.

The Fondi itself made up for everything the moment we stepped inside. Our host had left a bottle of local white wine on the counter and a handwritten note wishing us well. I poured us both a glass before unpacking a single bag, which tells you exactly where my priorities sat after that drive. The kitchen was compact but properly equipped, not one of those holiday lets where you open a drawer to find a single bent teaspoon and a corkscrew from 1987. I ran my hand along the counter and started mentally planning meals immediately.

That first evening we walked into Fondi town proper, maybe fifteen minutes on foot. The evening passeggiata was in full swing, families strolling, children on scooters, the whole leisurely theatre of it. We found a trattoria down a side street, nothing fancy, plastic tablecloths and a handwritten menu. I ordered cacio e pepe because when in Rome, or near enough, and it arrived properly creamy with visible flecks of black pepper. My partner had saltimbocca alla romana, veal with sage and prosciutto, and we shared a carafe of house red that cost less than my petrol station coffee. The waiter seemed genuinely pleased when I attempted my schoolboy Italian, though he did gently correct my pronunciation of "grazie" in a way that made me laugh at myself.

The next morning I was determined to cook properly. We had spotted a market setting up near the old town walls, so we wandered down with empty bags and ambitious plans. The market was magnificent chaos. Stall holders shouted prices, old women prodded vegetables with expert suspicion, and I found myself buying far more than we needed simply because everything looked so good. I came away with plump tomatoes still warm from the sun, a bulb of garlic with roots dangling, fresh ricotta from a local producer, and bunches of basil that filled the car with their smell. I also bought artichokes because they looked impressive, then spent twenty minutes on my phone in the kitchen working out how to actually prepare them.

My attempt at artichoke preparation was not my finest hour. I removed what felt like too many leaves, then too few, then stood over the sink with a growing pile of discarded greenery and a shrinking edible portion. The internet suggested lemon water to stop browning. I had no lemon. They browned. I trimmed and trimmed until I had something roughly the size of a golf ball, which I then braised with garlic and white wine. It tasted fine, if I'm honest, though my partner diplomatically suggested we stick to simpler vegetables for future meals. I laughed at myself properly for that one, standing in a foreign kitchen with green-stained fingers and an absurd sense of failure over a thistle.

The tomatoes, though. The tomatoes I did justice to. Simple bruschetta for lunch, toasted bread rubbed with garlic, piled high with diced tomato and basil, drizzled with olive oil I had bought from a stall where the vendor let me taste three varieties before choosing. We ate on the small terrace with that local white wine and some pecorino I had also acquired, and I felt genuinely pleased with myself. This was what self-catering should be, I decided. Not ambitious restaurant recreation, but letting excellent ingredients speak with minimal interference.

We found our rhythm over the week. Mornings for market visits, where I became slightly obsessed with a particular cheese vendor who recognised me by day three and threw in extra samples. Afternoons for simple lunches, often just bread and cheese and whatever fruit looked best. Evenings we alternated between cooking and eating out, discovering a pizzeria with a wood-fired oven where the owner spun dough in the window, and another trattoria where I had the best amatriciana of my life, the guanciale rendered properly crisp, the sauce clingy and rich.

My most successful cooking effort was a pasta alla gricia, which requires only guanciale, pecorino, black pepper, and pasta. I found the guanciale at a butcher's counter in the market, thickly sliced, and rendered it slowly until the fat turned translucent and the edges curled. The trick, I learned from another internet deep dive, is using some of that rendered fat to emulsify with the starchy pasta water and cheese. I stood at the hob like a proper nonna, stirring vigorously, and the result was genuinely good. My partner took a photo, which I suppose is modern approval. We ate it with more of that cheap house wine and I felt briefly like I understood something about this place, this way of eating that prioritises a few excellent things treated properly.

By our final day I had a small collection of half-used ingredients in the fridge, the usual holiday cooking debris. I made a frittata for lunch using leftover ricotta, the last of the basil, and some roasted peppers I had bought in oil from the market. It was improvised and slightly messy and absolutely delicious. We ate it cold on the drive back to Rome, much more confidently this time, the sat nav behaving itself and my phone firmly in aeroplane mode. I still think about that market, those tomatoes, the patient cheese man and his samples. And I think about my poor murdered artichoke, which taught me that sometimes the best holiday meals are the ones where you laugh at yourself, learn something, and then just cook something simpler with better ingredients.