Getting to Lucera was meant to be the easy bit. I'd done the hard part: surviving Bari airport's car hire queue, navigating the ring road without ending up in the port, and even remembering to stay left-ish on the autostrada. Then Google Maps decided to get creative. Instead of the sensible route, it sent me down what I can only describe as a goat track between two olive groves, where my Fiat 500's suspension made sounds I didn't think were possible. I arrived at the property with a branch of leaves stuck in my door handle and the smug satisfaction of someone who definitely took the wrong turning but refuses to admit it.

The Lucera itself was worth every pothole. A proper Puglian masseria-style place, all honey-coloured stone and shuttered windows, with a terrace that looked out over nothing but olive trees and sky. I dumped my bags, opened a beer from the fridge, and promptly discovered the outdoor kitchen. This, I decided within about four minutes, was going to be the heart of my entire holiday.

I'd planned to eat out plenty, of course. Puglia's famous for its food, and I'd read all the usual guides about orecchiette and burrata and raw sea urchins if you're feeling brave. But that first evening, standing by the built-in barbecue with my warm beer, something shifted. The local supermarket in the nearby town had been an absolute revelation. Not one of your British Tesco Express situations, but a proper family-run place where the cheese counter alone needed its own postcode. I'd bought stracciatella without really knowing what it was, some tomatoes that actually smelled of something, and a bottle of Primitivo that the woman behind the till had nodded at approvingly.

My first self-catering attempt was, frankly, embarrassing. I had this vision of rustic simplicity: grilled vegetables, local sausage, maybe some of that burrata torn over the top. What I produced was charred pepper, a sausage that I'd managed to cook on the outside while remaining essentially raw within, and burrata that I'd left in the sun too long so it had gone slightly weepy. I ate it on the terrace as the light faded, surrounded by crickets, and honestly? It tasted like absolute triumph. There's something about cooking badly in a beautiful place that feels somehow more authentic than getting it right.

The morning market became my religion. Every Tuesday and Friday in the town square, which was genuinely about ten minutes' drive away so I didn't feel too guilty about the carbon footprint. I'd go with an empty bag and absolutely no plan, which is how you're supposed to do markets, I think. One morning I got talking to a man selling nothing but artichokes, and through a combination of pointing and my terrible Italian, ended up with a bag of them plus detailed instructions I couldn't understand. I YouTubed "how to prepare artichoke" three times back at the Lucera and still managed to remove every edible bit by accident.

By day four I'd developed a system. Breakfast was always the same: the leftover bread from the previous evening, toasted on the outdoor grill because I'd worked out the fire management, rubbed with garlic and tomato in that proper Spanish-Italian way that makes you feel like a peasant genius. Lunch was whatever I'd found at the market, assembled rather than cooked. Dinner was my project, my slow descent into someone who genuinely cares about whether olive oil is filtered or not.

I did venture out to eat properly twice. Once to a trattoria where the waiter brought me food I hadn't ordered because "you look like you need feeding," which was both insulting and accurate. The second time to a seaside place for frittura di paranza, all those tiny fried fish you eat whole and pretend you're not slightly worried about. Both meals were excellent, obviously. The cooking was better than mine, the presentation was better than mine, and I didn't have to wash up. But I kept thinking about my terrible artichoke disaster, and the sausage incident, and the evening I'd made pasta with nothing but oil, garlic, and breadcrumbs and eaten three portions on the terrace while the bats came out.

There's something about self-catering in a place like this that strips away pretence. You're not performing being a foodie, you're just hungry in a foreign kitchen, making do with what's good and local and sometimes slightly mysterious. I left the Lucera with a jar of their olive oil in my suitcase, a newfound respect for artichokes, and the certain knowledge that I'll never cook as well as that grumpy waiter thought I needed to. But I'll keep trying, probably on another terrace, probably with another weeping burrata, definitely with no regrets at all.