The thing about driving on the right, I've decided, is that you should probably remember to do it before you've already committed to a roundabout. There I was, fresh off the plane at Olbia, proudly clutching our hire car keys like a man who definitely knew what he was doing, only to find myself staring down a very confused Sardinian in a Fiat Panda who had every right to be sounding his horn with the enthusiasm of a man whose dinner depended on it. My wife, ever the supportive passenger, simply opened the glovebox and pretended to look for something important until the ordeal passed.

By the time we crawled into Porto Rotondo, I had mostly mastered the whole "other side of the road" business, though my knuckles remained an interesting shade of white. The village announced itself with that particular hush of moneyed seaside places, all manicured hedges and terracotta roofs climbing down towards the water like they were showing off. Our apartment sat in one of those low-rise complexes that manage to look both modest and quietly expensive, the sort of place where the bougainvillea has clearly been coached into behaving itself.

The kitchen, I noted with the particular hunger of a man who had survived airport sandwiches, was actually rather promising. Proper gas hob, decent knives, a balcony that caught the afternoon sun in a way that suggested aperitivo was not merely an option but a moral obligation. We dumped our bags and did what any sensible person does in a new place: went hunting for food.

The Conad in nearby Olbia became our morning pilgrimage. I use "pilgrimage" deliberately, because there was something almost religious about my devotion to that cheese counter. Pecorino sardo aged until it could practically stand up and introduce itself, fresh ricotta that tasted of actual sheep rather than disappointment, and mozzarella di bufala that wept milk when you cut it. My wife developed a concerning relationship with the pane carasau, that paper-thin Sardinian flatbread that shatters satisfyingly and, we discovered, makes an excellent vehicle for anything spreadable. She ate it for breakfast with honey, for lunch with tomatoes, and on one memorable evening, standing in the kitchen at midnight, with nothing but olive oil and a look of quiet contentment.

The local market in Porto Rotondo itself operated with charming irregularity, which is to say we never quite worked out when it was actually happening. We caught it once, purely by accident, having set out for a walk and stumbled into a car park full of folding tables groaning with produce. Tomatoes that smelled like tomatoes, which shouldn't be remarkable but absolutely is. Tiny clams still gritty with sand, requiring the sort of careful rinsing that separates the patient cook from the person who ends up chewing on beaches. A man selling bottarga, the pressed mullet roe that grates into pasta like concentrated Mediterranean essence, who insisted we try a sliver and then watched our faces with the satisfaction of a man who knew exactly what was about to happen. The salt rush, the umami depth, the immediate need to own some immediately.

Back at the apartment, I attempted fregola with clams, that Sardinian pasta like oversized couscous that I'd read about with the confidence of a man who absolutely had this. I did not absolutely have this. The fregola stuck together in clumps that suggested solidarity rather than culinary intention. The clams, despite my careful purging, retained just enough sand to provide unexpected texture. I stood at that gas hob, stirring with increasing desperation, while my wife made supportive noises from the balcony where she was definitely not hiding. We ate it anyway, because holiday hunger is its own forgiving thing, and because the wine was cold and the view was doing considerable heavy lifting.

The second attempt went better. The third, I modestly believe, approached something like competence. By the week's end I could produce a respectable malloreddus, those ridged gnocchi-like shapes that hold sauce like they were designed by engineers, dressed simply with sausage and saffron. The saffron, I should note, came from San Gavino Monreale, apparently, though I bought it from a man whose explanation in Italian I understood only in fragments, catching "zafferano" and "buono" and deciding that was sufficient due diligence.

Evenings settled into rhythm. Aperitivo on the balcony with vermouth and olives that had been cured with something mysterious and orange-scented. Dinner cooked slowly, because the kitchen had no particular urgency and neither did we. The odd restaurant meal, of course, when the fish market restaurant down in the marina did something with sea bream that made my own efforts feel endearingly amateur. But mostly we ate in, making a mess of that kitchen, filling the fridge with experiments, discovering that my wife's midnight pane carasau habit was not, in fact, a phase.

On our last morning, I stood at the hob making one final fregola attempt, and it actually worked. The grains separate, the clams sand-free, the whole thing tasting of something I might deliberately choose to eat. My wife came in from the balcony, drawn by smells rather than duty, and we ate in silence that wasn't quite silence, just the comfortable kind of not-talking that happens when food is doing the speaking instead. The hire car waited downstairs, the roundabout loomed in my future, and I realised with the particular clarity of holiday endings that I would probably miss that kitchen more than the beach, more than the marina, more than almost anything. Though not, I confess, more than that cheese counter. Some pilgrimages simply change you.