I have never been so happy to see a pothole in my life. After six hours of driving from Turin airport, white-knuckling it through winding Piedmontese roads that seemed to get narrower with every kilometre, I finally spotted the tiny sign for Cessole. Relief lasted approximately four seconds, which is how long it took me to realise I had just driven straight past the turning for our holiday cottage and into someone's vineyard. The gentleman pruning his Nebbiolo vines looked up, entirely unsurprised, and waved me back with the weary patience of a man who had watched this exact scene unfold many times before.

The cottage itself, when I eventually found it, was everything the website had promised and nothing like I had expected. Stone walls thick enough to withstand a siege, a kitchen that smelled faintly of rosemary and old wood, and a view across rolling hills that made my slightly travel-sick stomach immediately forget its complaints. My partner was already unloading the boot, having sensibly refused to navigate after our disagreement about whether that last roundabout had actually been a roundabout or merely a decorative plaza.

We had agreed to self-cater. This was, in retrospect, ambitious.

The following morning I walked into Cessole village, a brisk twenty minutes that I told myself counted as exercise given the hills. The local alimentari was barely larger than my kitchen at home, yet contained more varieties of cured meat than I knew existed. The woman behind the counter watched me with barely concealed amusement as I pointed and gestured my way through purchasing guanciale, two enormous balls of mozzarella di bufala, and something she described as "special for the region" that turned out to be tajarin pasta so thin it barely existed. I also bought a bottle of Barbera because it seemed rude not to, and because I had already decided that cooking in Italy required wine for the chef.

That evening's attempt at tajarin al tartufo was educational. I had purchased fresh black truffles from a man in Alba market the day before, spending what felt like a small fortune for something that looked suspiciously like a lump of soil. The recipe seemed simple enough: butter, pasta, truffle shaved over the top. I shaved. I tossed. I somehow created a dish that tasted overwhelmingly of butter with occasional mysterious crunchy bits that may have been truffle, may have been grit from improper washing. My partner was kind about it. We opened a second bottle of Barbera.

The market at Alba became my weekend obsession. Saturday mornings found me squeezing through crowds of locals who clearly knew exactly what they wanted and where to get it, while I wandered between stalls like a child let loose in a sweet shop. I bought hazelnuts still warm from roasting, their papery skins rubbing off on my fingers. I bought gianduja that melted on my tongue before I could properly taste it. I bought vegetables that actually smelled of something, which sounds absurd until you have spent years eating supermarket tomatoes that taste of refrigerated disappointment.

By Wednesday I had developed what I can only describe as cheese anxiety. The selection at the small market in nearby Roccaverano was overwhelming: robiola so soft it required careful handling, aged Castelmagno with its sharp, almost aggressive flavour, tomme that the vendor insisted I try with a particular local honey. I bought them all. Our cottage refrigerator, clearly designed for more reasonable people, groaned under the weight of my acquisitions. We ate cheese for breakfast. We ate cheese before dinner. We ate cheese instead of dinner, on one occasion, accompanied by a bottle of Arneis and some bread that I had actually managed to purchase while it was still warm.

My cooking improved marginally. I mastered bagna cauda, that glorious anchovy and garlic bath for raw vegetables, mainly because it is technically impossible to ruin something that contains that much butter and that many anchovies. I made risotto with the local Carnaroli rice, stirring with the dedication of a woman who had read too many articles about the importance of mantecatura. It was good. It was not as good as the version I ate at a tiny osteria in Neive, where the chef had clearly been born with a wooden spoon in his hand, but it was good.

The kitchen in our cottage developed a comfortable chaos. Olive oil bottles multiplied. The rubbish bin filled with eggshells and vegetable trimmings. I learned to make proper coffee in the moka pot after several mornings of producing something that tasted of burnt regret. I burned the first polenta, which my partner ate anyway, which is how I know he is a keeper.

On our final evening I attempted vitello tonnato, that peculiar Piedmontese dish of cold veal with tuna sauce. The veal was from a butcher in Canelli who had communicated entirely through gestures and encouraging noises. The sauce involved more anchovies, because apparently Piedmontese cuisine operates on the principle that there is no such thing as too many anchovies. It was not perfect. The veal was slightly overcooked, the sauce slightly too thick. We ate it on the terrace as the sun went down, with the last of our Barbera and some of that wretched cheese that I had finally managed to reduce to manageable quantities.

I have cooked more ambitious meals. I have certainly cooked more technically proficient meals. But I am not sure I have ever cooked meals that tasted more of where I was, of early morning market trips and conversations held in broken Italian, of a kitchen that never quite lost that rosemary smell and a refrigerator that never quite closed properly. We left with empty suitcases and full stomachs, which seems exactly how a holiday should end.