I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I managed to leave my carefully compiled folder of directions sitting on the kitchen table in Manchester. There I was, winding through the Lombardy countryside with a hire car full of suitcases and a phone that had decided this was the perfect moment to run out of battery. The sat nav had given up somewhere near Brescia, and I found myself circling the same vineyard three times before spotting a tiny sign for the property down a gravel track that looked more suited to goats than a Fiat Panda.

The villa itself was one of those classic Italian affairs, all terracotta roof tiles and shuttered windows, with a view of Lake Garda that made the previous two hours of mild panic instantly worthwhile. I tumbled out of the car, stretched my legs, and promptly discovered that the key safe code I had scribbled on my hand had sweated into illegibility. After twenty minutes of trying variations and cursing my own organisation, I finally cracked it open and stepped inside to the smell of lemon cleaner and possibility.

The kitchen, I noted with immediate relief, was properly equipped. Not one of those holiday rentals with a blunt knife and a single wonky pan, but actual decent cookware, a proper gas hob, and enough counter space to get ambitious. I flung open the shutters, let the late afternoon light flood in, and made my first executive decision: I was going to need supplies, and I was going to need them before the local shops shut.

The nearby village, barely ten minutes walk, turned out to be one of those places where the food shop is also the post office and also the place where local men gather to argue about football. I bought pasta, tinned tomatoes, local olive oil that came in a bottle with no label, and a hunk of parmesan that the owner cut from an enormous wheel with satisfying theatricality. I also bought wine from a cardboard box on the floor because the man behind the counter nodded approvingly when I pointed at it.

Back at the villa, I attempted my first self-catering triumph: a simple tomato sauce. Simple, I thought. How hard could it be? The answer, I discovered, is moderately hard when you have misjudged the ferocity of an unfamiliar gas hob and spend ten minutes frantically stirring while garlic turns from fragrant to frankly accusatory. I salvaged it, just about, with more olive oil and a certain amount of muttering. The pasta was al dente by accident rather than design, but eaten on the terrace with that view and that wine, it tasted like the best meal I had eaten in months.

The following morning, I found the local market. It was not large, perhaps fifteen stalls set up in a square near the church, but it was serious about its purpose. I bought tomatoes that actually smelled of tomatoes, basil with roots still attached, fresh eggs with feathers stuck to them, and bread from a woman who tore a piece off for me to try before I committed to the whole loaf. I felt enormously pleased with myself, like a proper Italian nonna in training, right up until I got back and realised I had no idea what to do with the quantity of courgettes I had enthusiastically purchased.

That evening, I made a frittata that was more vegetable than egg, a sort of kitchen-sink affair that used up the courgettes, some leftover cheese, and a handful of herbs I had picked from a pot on the terrace. It was not elegant. It was, however, genuinely delicious, and I ate it cold for lunch the next day with more of that bread and some local salami I had spotted in a deli window.

By day three, I had developed a routine. Morning coffee on the terrace, then a wander to see what looked good at the market or the small supermarket with its excellent cheese selection. Afternoon spent attempting something ambitious, or at least ambitious for me, which meant risotto on Wednesday. I stirred for what felt like hours, adding stock in the approved manner, watching it turn creamy and proper. It was decent, though I suspect a Lombardy grandmother would have found it a touch too firm. I did not care. I ate the entire pan across two meals, feeling deeply satisfied with my own competence.

The mishaps continued in minor ways. I set off the smoke alarm making bruschetta, which still feels like a personal low. I bought what I thought was fresh pasta and discovered it needed considerably more cooking than I had allowed. I attempted to replicate a local dish I had seen on a menu, got the herbs wrong, and produced something that was edible but definitely not what I had intended.

Yet there was something genuinely restorative about this rhythm of shopping and cooking and eating, about learning the particular character of a small kitchen in a particular place. I began to understand which pan worked best for which job, where the hot spot on the hob was, which window to open to get a cross breeze while I chopped onions. These small domestic discoveries felt like a kind of belonging, temporary but real.

On my final evening, I made that tomato sauce again, the proper simple one, and got it right this time. Garlic gently golden, tomatoes simmered until sweet, basil torn in at the end. I ate it with fresh tagliatelle I had bought from a shop that made it in the back room, sitting on the terrace as the light faded over the lake. I thought about my chaotic arrival, my sweaty key code, my burnt first attempt. I thought about how often I rush through meals at home, eating at my desk or in front of a screen, and how different it felt to cook slowly and eat slowly and notice the view changing as the sun went down.

I left the next morning with a bag of that olive oil, some packets of local pasta, and a resolution to cook like this more often at home. Whether I will or not remains to be seen. There is something about a kitchen in Lombardy, with its shutters and its view and its excellent local ingredients, that is not so easily transported back to a terraced house in Manchester. But I have the recipe for that tomato sauce now, properly written down this time, and that feels like a decent souvenir.