I should have known the holiday was going to be interesting when I tried to fold our hire car's wing mirror in on a narrow lane and accidentally set off the panic alarm instead. There we were, halfway up a mountain road above Lake Garda, horn blaring, me frantically pressing buttons while a bemused Italian cyclist looked on with the kind of pity usually reserved for people who try to use chopsticks for soup.

The journey from Verona had been straightforward enough until the final stretch. Tremosine sits perched on the cliffs above the western shore, and the road up winds through olive groves and past stone villages that look like they've been there since someone first said "this view's nice, let's stay." By the time we reached Voiandes, my palms were damp and my passenger, my sister, had developed a nervous habit of pointing out imaginary oncoming traffic.

The property itself was one of those traditional stone houses with a terrace that makes you forget the journey immediately. Terracotta pots with herbs, a view straight across the lake to mountains hazy in the afternoon light, and a kitchen that smelled faintly of the previous guests' last espresso. We dumped our bags and did what any sensible person does after a stressful drive: opened the local wine we'd bought at a garage forecourt and stood on that terrace making appreciative noises.

That first evening set the tone for how we'd eat for the next week. The village of Pieve, a short wander away, had a small shop where an elderly woman sold us cheese that she cut with wire and wrapped in paper like a present. We bought bread that was still warm, tomatoes that actually tasted of something, and a salami that the woman tapped knowingly, as if to say "this one, you want this one." Back at the house, we made the simplest possible supper: bread, cheese, meat, tomatoes torn by hand, olive oil that was so peppery it made my sister cough. We ate until the light went pink over the lake and talked about whether we could feasibly move here, which is what everyone says and nobody does.

The self-catering element became both joy and mild humiliation. The kitchen at Voiandes was well-equipped, which only highlighted my inadequacies. I attempted risotto on our third night, having watched a YouTube video with the confidence of a man who has never made risotto. The result was edible but possessed a texture best described as "determined." My sister, who is no cook either, attempted to make polenta the following evening after we'd seen it on a menu in Limone. We ended up with something that could have patched a wall. We laughed until our stomachs hurt, then ordered pizza from a place in Campione that delivered up the mountain, the driver apparently unfazed by roads that still made me grip the steering wheel like it owed me money.

The market in Gargnano, a few miles along the lakeside, became our Saturday ritual. We'd drive down early, before the heat built, and wander between stalls of lake fish and vegetables arranged with artistic precision. I bought too much of everything, always, drawn in by free samples of pecorino or a man shouting about his anchovies. One week I came back with three different types of beans and no real plan. They sat in the kitchen looking at me accusingly until I finally looked up a recipe for pasta e fagioli and produced something that, if not authentic, was at least heartfelt.

Breakfasts became a particular pleasure. We'd walk to the bakery in Pieve for fresh brioche, proper ones with crema inside that squirted everywhere if you weren't careful, which I never was. Back at the terrace with coffee made in a moka pot I eventually mastered after several explosive attempts, we'd eat slowly and watch the lake change colour. My sister started calling this "doing the Italian thing," by which she meant taking longer over breakfast than we ever would at home.

Lunches were picnic affairs, usually down at the lake itself. We'd pack bread, cheese, whatever fruit looked good, and find a spot on the rocks near Campione or one of the small beaches. The water was clear enough to see fish, and I'd swim out just far enough to feel smug about the exercise before returning to eat more bread. One afternoon I tried to replicate a local dish I'd seen, some kind of lake fish baked with herbs, using trout from the market. It fell apart completely and we ate it as a sort of fish hash, which my sister declared "rustic" in a tone that meant "disaster."

The local restaurants we did visit informed our attempts. A meal in Limone, sitting by the harbour with spaghetti alle vongole that tasted of the sea itself, sent me back to Voiandes determined to try clams. The fish market man talked me through preparation with the patience of someone explaining to a child. The result was better than my risotto, which is to say it resembled food. We celebrated with more of that garage forecourt wine, which by then felt like an old friend.

By our final days, we'd developed a rhythm. Morning market or shop, afternoon cooking with varying success, evening on the terrace with whatever we'd managed. I made a decent osso buco on our last night, after finding veal at a butcher in Gargnano who seemed surprised anyone would ask. It cooked slowly while we sat with aperitivo, the smell filling the house, and when we finally ate it felt like an achievement. Not perfect, but ours. We raised glasses to the lake, to the kitchen that had tolerated our experiments, to the woman in Pieve who had sold us cheese and never once commented on our terrible Italian.

Driving away, wing mirror successfully folded this time, I thought about those meals more than any sight we'd seen. The disasters and the small triumphs, the food that connected us to where we were. I understood something I hadn't before: that self-catering isn't about saving money or avoiding restaurants. It's about the conversation with a place, the daily negotiation with what's available, the way a kitchen in a foreign house slowly becomes familiar. We'd arrived as tourists and left, I liked to think, as slightly better cooks and certainly more honest ones. The polenta incident alone had taught me humility. The osso buco had given me hope. And somewhere in between, we'd eaten very well indeed.