I have never been so relieved to see a stone wall covered in ivy as I was when we finally found the place, three hours after leaving Rome and a good forty minutes after I confidently told my partner Sarah that I "definitely knew where we were going." The sat nav had given up somewhere near Todi's medieval walls, and my phone map had decided that offline mode meant "guess." We had already done one full loop of a vineyard, waved at a very confused farmer twice, and I had knocked over an entire bag of crisps in the hire car during a sharp reverse back up a gravel track. Sarah was eating the crumbs off her cardigan in silence. Not the glamorous start I had pictured.

The house itself, when we found it, was exactly the sort of thing that makes you forgive yourself everything. Stone walls thick enough to withstand a siege, a terrace that looked out over olive groves and nothing else, and a kitchen that smelled faintly of rosemary from the previous guests. The owners had left a bottle of local Grechetto on the counter and a handwritten note saying the fig tree was ours to raid. I unpacked our bags while Sarah opened the wine, and we stood on that terrace watching the light change over the valley until our stomachs reminded us we had only eaten crisps since breakfast.

We had planned to cook properly that first night. I had visions of rustic pasta, maybe something with wild mushrooms, a real statement of intent. The reality was a slightly desperate rummage through the cupboards, the discovery that I had forgotten to pack any actual salt, and a meal of tinned tomatoes, garlic, and pasta that was edible mainly because of the olive oil I found in a dusty bottle at the back of a shelf. Sarah was kind about it. She is always kind. She did mention three times that perhaps tomorrow we should find a market.

The Todi market, we discovered, happens on Saturday mornings in the Piazza del Popolo, and it is the sort of market that makes you feel like a fraud for ever having bought a supermarket tomato. We arrived late, having got lost again, this time in the town's medieval streets, which are beautiful but not designed for people in a hurry. I bought too much of everything. Aubergines that were almost black and glossy, bunches of sage that filled the car with their resinous smell, a wheel of pecorino from a woman who let me try three kinds before I chose, and sausages from Norcia that were coiled like sleeping snakes in their tray. Sarah bought bread from a baker who spoke no English and communicated entirely through gestures and smiles, and we left with a loaf still warm enough to burn my fingertips through the paper.

That afternoon I attempted a proper meal. I fried the aubergines in slices, layered them with tomatoes and basil from a pot on the terrace, and baked the whole thing with the pecorino grated over the top. The kitchen filled with smoke at one point because I had the oven too high, and I had to open all the windows and fan the alarm with a tea towel, but the result was actually decent. We ate it outside as the sun went down, with more of that Grechetto, and I felt genuinely proud in a way I rarely do about cooking at home. Something about the ingredients being so good that they did most of the work. Something about being in a place where food still feels connected to the ground it came from.

The rest of the week became a rhythm of cooking and eating that I have not managed to replicate since. Mornings were for coffee on the terrace with bread and the local honey we found at a farm shop just outside town. Lunches were simple, usually whatever we had bought the day before, eaten at the kitchen table with the windows open to the cicadas. Dinners were my attempts at Umbrian dishes, some more successful than others. A lentil soup from Castelluccio that took three hours and was worth every minute. A failed attempt at torta al testo that ended up more like a pancake, which Sarah ate anyway and declared "rustic." A chicken roasted with lemons and the wild fennel I picked from the lane, which was probably the best thing I have ever cooked and which I know I could not recreate if I tried.

We did eat out twice, both times in Todi itself. Once at a trattoria near the cathedral where I had strangozzi with black truffle and made embarrassing noises of enjoyment that the waiter definitely heard. Once at a place so small it had three tables, where the owner brought us dishes we had not ordered and refused to tell us what they were until we had eaten them. Both meals were excellent, and both made me glad we had the house to return to, the kitchen to cook in, the terrace to sit on with digestive biscuits and the last of the wine.

On our final morning I made one last trip to the bakery for bread, and the woman recognised me and gave me an extra pastry "for the journey." I ate it in the car, getting crumbs everywhere, while Sarah drove and the sat nav worked perfectly for once, as if mocking me. I looked back at the house as we left, already thinking about what I would cook next time, already knowing there would have to be a next time. Some places stay with you because of what you did there. This one stayed because of what I ate, what I cooked, what I tried to cook, and the person who sat across from me for every meal, kindly pretending not to notice when I burned things.