I have always believed that the truest measure of a holiday is not the view from your bedroom window but what you put on your plate at the end of a long day. So when my partner and I finally pulled into Marano di Valpolicella after a journey that involved one wrong turn, a very patient local farmer, and me confidently mispronouncing "Valpolicella" for a solid three hours, I was already thinking about dinner. The wrong turn, by the way, was entirely my fault. I had insisted I knew a shortcut. The shortcut led to a gravel track, a small vineyard, and a dog that looked deeply disappointed in my life choices. We arrived at the property with dust on the windscreen and my pride in tatters.

The villa itself was exactly the sort of place that makes you want to cook immediately. A proper kitchen with actual counter space, which in holiday let terms is practically miraculous. I stood in the doorway clutching a bag of groceries we had grabbed in haste from a petrol station, feeling like a fraud. You cannot cook Valpolicella cuisine with petrol station bread. My partner, ever practical, pointed out that we had a full week and that my dramatics would not season the soup.

Morning brought salvation in the form of the market in nearby Fumane. We drove there with empty bags and unreasonable ambitions. The cheese stall alone required twenty minutes of my life I will never regret. I attempted to ask for pecorino in Italian and apparently asked for something involving sheep in a way that made the vendor laugh kindly and give me an extra wedge. We left with tomatoes that smelled like actual tomatoes, which sounds obvious until you remember supermarket ones back home. There was prosciutto sliced so thin you could read through it, and a bottle of local olive oil that I cradled like a newborn.

Back at the villa, I attempted my first proper meal. I had watched the owner demonstrate the outdoor grill the previous evening, nodding along with the confidence of a man who had never grilled over an open flame in his life. The result was edible, which I consider a triumph, though the local wine we opened helped considerably. Valpolicella wine, drunk in Valpolicella, beside a grill in Valpolicella, tastes different. I am aware this sounds like something a pretentious person would say. I do not care. It is true.

The second market attempt was in San Pietro in Cariano, slightly larger, slightly more dangerous for my wallet. I bought fresh pasta without any clear plan for it, which is how I found myself at midnight googling "what to do with rabbit ragu" while my partner slept peacefully. The ragu cooked for three hours the next day. I stirred it with the devotion of a man who has nothing else to do, which was accurate. We ate it on the terrace as the light went soft and I felt briefly like the sort of person who has their life together.

Self-catering, I have decided, is an exercise in humility. My attempt at risotto on day four was technically risotto in that it contained rice. The arborio had turned somehow both crunchy and gluey, a combination I would have thought impossible. We ate it anyway, because we had made it, because the wine was good, because holiday rules apply. My partner said it was "interesting" with the particular tone that means "I am being kind."

The villa's kitchen became my kingdom and my courtroom. I ruled badly and was judged fairly. By day six I had settled into a rhythm of simple things done properly: grilled vegetables with that olive oil, fresh bread from a bakery in Marano itself, cheese and meat arranged on a board with more care than strictly necessary. I stopped trying to impress myself and started eating like a local, which is to say slowly, with wine, without urgency.

On our final morning I made coffee and sat with the leftover bread and some honey from the market. The farmer's dog had been wrong about me, I decided. I was not a complete disaster. Just a man who cannot pronounce place names, makes questionable shortcuts, and produces mediocre risotto. But a man who ate very well indeed in Northern Italy, on his own terms, in his own time, with only the grill and the market and the patience of a partner who knows when to let me fail.

The honey was extraordinary, by the way. I have never been able to find anything like it since.