I have never been so relieved to see a sink in my life. After seven hours of driving from Ancona Airport, convinced my sat nav had developed a personal vendetta against me, I finally pulled up to our holiday home just outside Ascoli Piceno. The mishap? I had spent the last forty-five minutes frantically searching for the keys, which I had apparently posted through the letterbox of the property in a moment of travel-induced delirium. There they sat, mocking me from the other side of the door, until the lovely local caretaker arrived with her spare set and what I can only describe as the knowing smile of someone who has seen this many times before.

But let me tell you, the moment I stepped into that kitchen, all was forgiven. The place had proper rustic charm, terracotta floors and wooden beams, but it was the cooking space that really got me excited. A decent-sized hob, an oven that looked like it had seen some action, and most importantly, a proper wooden table where I could already picture myself demolishing plates of food.

The next morning, I was up at an ungodly hour for a man on holiday, driven by one thing and one thing only: the market in Ascoli Piceno's Piazza del Popolo. I had read about it, dreamt about it, and now I was weaving through those stunning Renaissance arcades with an empty shopping bag and dangerous levels of enthusiasm. The olives alone nearly finished me off, plump and glistening in their brine, the vendor practically forcing samples on me until I felt obliged to buy far more than any reasonable person could consume in a fortnight. I also picked up pecorino that smelled like it meant business, fat porchetta rolls from a van that had a queue of locals twenty deep, and vegetables that still had actual soil on them.

That first self-catering attempt was, shall we say, ambitious. I had this vision of recreating a proper Marchigiano feast, something my grandmother might have recognised if she had been Italian rather than from Leeds. I stood in that kitchen, surrounded by my market haul, and promptly realised I had no idea what to do with half of it. The artichokes particularly humiliated me. I had watched a man trim them with the speed and precision of a surgeon, yet here I was, hacking away like I was defusing a bomb, ending up with what can only be described as artichoke carnage. I drowned the survivors in olive oil and garlic and hoped for the best. They were edible, which I counted as a victory, though my partner's diplomatic silence spoke volumes.

The local olive oil, though, that was the revelation. I had been buying supermarket extra virgin for years like a complete mug. This stuff, proper Ascolana oil, was grassy and peppery and made even my disastrous artichokes taste vaguely intentional. I started putting it on everything. Bread, obviously. Tomatoes, certainly. A spoonful straight into my mouth while nobody was looking, absolutely.

By day four, I had developed something of a routine. Morning market, either in town or the smaller one at Porta Romana, then back to experiment. I discovered olive all'ascolana, those magnificent stuffed and fried olives the region is famous for, and became slightly obsessed. The first batch I attempted at the property was a disaster of almost comic proportions. The breadcrumbs went everywhere, the oil was too hot, and I ended up with exploded olives that looked like they had been through something traumatic. But I persisted, because I am nothing if not stubborn when food is involved, and by attempt three I had something that wouldn't shame a local trattoria. Probably. Okay, maybe a very forgiving one.

The butcher in Ascoli's old town became my accomplice. I would point at cuts of meat with the confidence of a man who absolutely did not know what he was doing, and he would patiently explain, in rapid Italian that I mostly failed to understand, what to do with them. I came away with ciauscolo, that soft spreadable salami, which I ate on toasted bread for lunch three days running until my partner threatened intervention.

Evenings were spent at that wooden table, usually with something simple. Pasta with vincisgrassi, the local baked lasagne variation I attempted once and decided was better left to professionals, or just good bread and cheese and wine from a vineyard I could actually see from the terrace. The property had a barbecue too, which I fired up with the enthusiasm of a man who had watched perhaps too many cooking programmes. The local sausages, thick with fennel, were magnificent. My attempt at grilling fish less so, though the local white wine helped me forget that particular tragedy.

What struck me most, I think, was how the food became the rhythm of the holiday. Not sightseeing, not checking boxes, but the simple pleasure of buying something from the person who made it, failing to cook it properly, then gradually getting better. I left with a jar of that olive oil, some ciauscolo wrapped in paper, and a genuine sadness that my next kitchen would be my own thoroughly mediocre one back home.

I also left with a newfound respect for anyone who can trim an artichoke without looking like they are performing amateur surgery. Some skills, I have accepted, require more than a week in a holiday kitchen. But I will keep trying, if only for the excuse to return.