I have never been so relieved to see a kitchen in my life. After a three-hour flight, a chaotic queue at Fiumicino, and a taxi driver who treated the Grande Raccordo Anulare like his personal racetrack, we finally rocked up at our holiday let in Roma. I was already dreaming of a cold beer and putting my feet up. That is when I realised I had left the entire bag of groceries on the train from the airport. Not a snack. Not a bottle of wine. The lot. My partner looked at me with the kind of patience that only comes from fifteen years of my nonsense, and we trudged back out to find a supermarket before everything shut.

The flat itself was a proper little gem, tucked into a residential street where actual Romans live rather than just tourists. The kitchen was compact but well-equipped, which turned out to be a blessing because we were about to spend a lot of time in it. That first evening, armed with replacement pasta, tinned tomatoes, and a hunk of pecorino from a nearby alimentari, I attempted the simplest cacio e pepe. I failed spectacularly. The cheese clumped into something resembling rubber cement. We ate it anyway, standing at the tiny counter, laughing through mouthfuls of gritty disappointment with a bottle of cheap Frascati that cost about six euros and tasted like sunshine.

The morning market at Campo de' Fiori became our daily ritual. I am not a morning person, but the promise of fresh produce dragged me out of bed like nothing else. The stalls heaved with artichokes still attached to their violet stalks, tomatoes that actually smelled of something, and bunches of wild herbs I could not name. An elderly woman selling cheese took pity on my pointing and gesturing, selecting a slab of aged ricotta salata and miming grating it over pasta. I nodded enthusiastically and bought twice what I needed. By day four, our fridge was a chaotic museum of good intentions: three types of salami, artichokes I had no idea how to prepare, and a jar of local honey that I kept opening just to smell.

My cooking improved marginally. A simple pasta alla gricia came together properly once I stopped rushing the guanciale. I learned that Roman courgettes are smaller and sweeter than the watery monsters back home, needing little more than olive oil and a hot pan. One afternoon I attempted carciofi alla romana, having watched a YouTube video in broken Italian. The artichokes turned brown and angry-looking, but simmered with garlic and mint, they softened into something genuinely edible. My partner photographed the evidence, presumably for future blackmail.

The flat's tiny balcony became our dining room most evenings. We would assemble plates of buffalo mozzarella, prosciutto di Norcia, and bread from the forno around the corner, then watch the street below as families returned from work and scooters buzzed past. Eating out felt almost unnecessary when we had such bounty to hand, though we did treat ourselves to suppli from a nearby takeaway, those glorious fried rice balls with molten cheese centres that ruin all other fried food forever.

By the end of the week, our market Italian had improved from embarrassed pointing to actual brief conversations. The cheese woman asked after my artichokes. I admitted defeat with a shrug, and she laughed, pressing a slice of testaccio cheese into my hand to try. That is the thing about self-catering somewhere properly local. You begin as an outsider fumbling with clumpy cheese sauce, and somehow end up part of the rhythm, however briefly, of a neighbourhood that feeds itself beautifully without fuss. I still think about that balcony, those simple meals, and the particular pride of finally getting a gricia right on our last night, just as the streetlights flickered on and Rome settled into another warm evening.