I have never been more grateful for a sat nav than I was trying to find our holiday let just outside Asti. We had flown into Turin, picked up the hire car, and promptly spent forty minutes driving in what I can only describe as a very scenic circle through the Monferrato hills. The mishap, you ask? I had confidently told my partner that I spoke "enough Italian to get by," which turned out to be a massive overstatement when I tried to ask an elderly local for directions and somehow ended up complimenting his goat on its excellent eyebrows. The goat, to be fair, did have remarkable eyebrows. The man looked at me with the kind of pity usually reserved for lost tourists, pointed left, and muttered something that definitely included the word "inglese."

We finally rolled up to a converted farmhouse surrounded by vineyards, and I immediately forgot about my linguistic humiliation. The place had that wonderful slightly-shabby grandeur that Italian country properties do so well. Terracotta floors, wooden beams thick enough to hang a hammock from, and a kitchen that made me want to weep with joy. I am not exaggerating when I say I spent the first ten minutes just opening and closing the enormous fridge, which was completely empty but full of possibility.

The owners had left a bottle of local Barbera and a note suggesting we visit the Saturday market in Asti proper. We took this as divine instruction and spent our first evening doing nothing more strenuous than sitting on the terrace, drinking that wine, and arguing about whether the distant lights were another village or just very ambitious fireflies.

Saturday morning arrived with the kind of hunger that only a proper market can satisfy. Asti's market sprawls through the centre with absolutely no regard for pedestrian traffic flow. We were swept along by determined nonnas wielding wheely baskets like battering rams, and I quickly learned that hesitation is fatal in the cheese queue. My partner, who is usually the more reserved of us, found herself in a passionate twenty-minute conversation with a salumi vendor about the relative merits of tajarin versus tagliatelle. I understood perhaps three words but nodded enthusiastically whenever either of them looked at me.

Our basket filled with things I had only previously seen on television. White truffles, because we were in season and apparently my restraint evaporates in foreign countries. Robiola cheese so soft it practically begged to be spread on something. Tomatoes that smelled like actual tomatoes, which feels worth mentioning given what passes for them in British supermarkets. A hunk of grana padano that required its own seat in the car.

Back at the farmhouse, I attempted to honour these ingredients with my limited cooking abilities. The kitchen, as I mentioned, was magnificent. I was not. My first attempt at tajarin al tartufo involved me frantically YouTubing how to shave a truffle without destroying either it or my dignity. I failed at both. The pasta was slightly overcooked, the truffle looked like it had been attacked by an enthusiastic woodpecker, and yet it tasted better than anything I have ever produced in my own kitchen. Something about the local olive oil, or perhaps the knowledge that I was eating it on a terrace surrounded by vines, elevated my mediocre efforts into something genuinely moving.

We ate outside every single evening. Simple things mostly. Grilled vegetables drizzled with oil so green it looked radioactive. Fresh bread from a bakery in nearby San Damiano d'Asti that opened at six in the morning and sold out by nine. One memorable lunch of leftover roast peppers, cheese, and salami that we assembled with our hands like absolute animals while sitting by the pool.

I had intended to cook properly every night. I brought recipe ideas. I had aspirations. What actually happened was that we kept finding reasons to buy more food from the market, more wine from the vineyard ten minutes down the road, more of those absurdly good hazelnuts that Piedmont seems to produce as effortlessly as breathing. The kitchen became less a place of culinary discipline and more a staging area for prolonged grazing.

On our final morning, I made coffee in the little moka pot I had finally mastered, and sat watching the mist lift off the hills. My partner emerged, surveyed the remains of last night's cheese board still sitting out, and asked if I was going to write about this trip. I said I supposed I would. She asked if I would mention the goat. I said absolutely, it was the most successful conversation I had had all week.

We left with suitcases substantially heavier than when we arrived, mostly due to bottles of wine and a deeply impractical quantity of dried porcini. I also left with the uncomfortable realisation that I am exactly the kind of person who thinks buying a truffle shaver will transform my home cooking. It will not. But I will treasure the fantasy, and the memory of that kitchen, and the taste of tomatoes that actually tasted of something, for a very long time indeed.