I have never been more grateful for a sat nav than I was driving up to Lagolo in South Tyrol, though I will admit it took me a good twenty minutes of circling the same roundabout near Trento before I realised I had been following the voice directions for "Lagolo" when I had actually programmed "Lago di Ledro" by mistake. The two are neighbours, geographically speaking, but my stomach was making decisions by that point and I had already started hallucinating speck and schlutzkrapfen. Still, we got there eventually, me slightly pinker in the face than the Dolomite sunset, my other half doing that patient smiling thing he has perfected over fifteen years.

The Lagolo itself was one of those proper South Tyrolean farm stays, all timber balconies and the faint, glorious smell of someone's slow-cooking dinner drifting from somewhere down the lane. Ours was the upper floor of a converted barn, and the kitchen, I noted with the keen eye of a woman who had packed three different olive oils "just in case," was surprisingly well-equipped. Granite worktops, a hob that actually responded when you turned the dial, and a fridge that hummed with industrious purpose. I unpacked my oils with the satisfaction of a chess grandmaster setting out pieces.

That first evening we did not cook. We walked, slightly delirious from the journey, down to the little cluster of buildings near the lake shore and found a gasthaus where I ate knodel that were so dense and comforting they should be available on prescription. My other half had the goulash, because he always does, and we sat there with our beer and our stupidity, watching the last light go off the mountains, too tired to speak much beyond "good, this" and "mm, very good."

The next morning I was up early, which never happens, driven by a strange agricultural enthusiasm I can only attribute to the altitude. The farm shop at the Lagolo had fresh eggs, still with that proper orange yolk you never see at home, and butter that tasted like it had been churned by someone who cared deeply about the whole enterprise. I made fried eggs with speck I had bought the night before, and we ate on the balcony with the mist still sitting in the valley below us, feeling insufferably smug about our life choices.

By day three I had become ambitious. The market in Riva del Garda, which sits about twenty minutes down the road, was my undoing. I bought vegetables I could not name, a hard cheese that the vendor insisted was "only for cooking, signora," and more porcini mushrooms than two people could reasonably consume. I had plans. I had a recipe I had found on my phone, written in Italian, which I had translated badly. That evening I attempted something between a mushroom risotto and a tyrolean graukase soup, and achieved neither. The rice was simultaneously crunchy and gluey, an achievement of sorts. We ate it anyway, with more of the local wine than was strictly necessary, and laughed until my other half got hiccups.

The proper lesson came from watching our hosts. The grandmother, I think she was, appeared one morning with a bowl of fresh ricotta and some of her own apricot jam. No recipe, no fuss, just the confidence of someone who has cooked with these ingredients since childhood. I asked, through gestures mostly, about the jam. She explained, I think, something about late summer fruit and lemon juice, but the crucial detail I missed entirely because I was distracted by a cat walking along the fence with a lizard in its mouth. Rural life, I reminded myself, is not always picturesque.

We did better with simpler things. Pasta with butter and the local cheese, which melted into something silken and proper. Grilled vegetables with olive oil that I had, thank goodness, brought from home. Bread from the bakery in Ledro, proper sourdough with a crust that could stand up to serious chewing. Breakfast became our ritual, the eggs and speck and sometimes just tomatoes with salt, eaten slowly with coffee that I made too strong because the Italian measure of "a cup" always seems to mean something different to me.

On our last day I finally bought the proper graukase from the farm, and some of their cured ham, and made the simplest possible thing for dinner: cheese melted with onions, ham on the side, bread to mop. It was not sophisticated. It was, I realised, exactly what this place was about. The ingredients did the work. I just had to stop getting in their way.

Driving away, slightly rounder and considerably happier, I caught myself already planning return meals in my head. Same roundabout, I noted. Same sat nav voice. But this time, I told myself, I would program the right destination from the start.