I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I put the postcode into my sat nav and it directed me to a farmyard full of very unimpressed cows. Turns out there is more than one Oosterwolde in the Netherlands, and I had picked the wrong one with spectacular confidence. Forty-five minutes of cheerful Dutch farmers waving me about later, I finally found the proper place, a smart little holiday home tucked along a quiet lane where the only traffic jams involve tractors and the occasional determined goose.

The property itself was spot on, exactly the sort of self-catering setup that makes you immediately overambitious about cooking. I dumped my bags, flung open the fridge with the energy of a contestant on one of those cooking programmes, and then remembered I had not actually bought any food yet. The local supermarket in the village was small but brilliantly stocked, and I wandered the aisles like a child in a sweet shop, filling my basket with local cheeses, smoked sausage, and something called suikerbrood that I absolutely did not need but could not resist. The woman at the till smiled at my haul and said something in Frisian that I nodded along to with the blank enthusiasm of a man who had not understood a word.

That first evening I attempted to cook a proper Frisian meal. I had grabbed some fresh fish from a little shop near the water, plus potatoes and greens from a roadside honesty box I passed on my corrected journey. The kitchen was better equipped than my own at home, which only made my failure more embarrassing. I managed to overcook the fish while simultaneously undercooking the potatoes, a feat of culinary imbalance I did not think physically possible. I sat there at the little dining table, chewing my way through this lopsided dinner with a glass of decent local beer, and had one of those moments of gentle self-reflection. Here I was in this lovely peaceful bit of the Netherlands, surrounded by proper food and proper countryside, and I had turned it into a plate of mediocrity through nothing but my own misplaced confidence.

The next morning I did what I should have done from the start and headed to the local market. It was not enormous, just a modest gathering in a nearby town square with stalls selling everything from fresh stroopwafels to wheels of cheese you could barely lift. I bought bread still warm from the oven, proper butter, and eggs with actual dirt on them, the kind of eggs that make you feel briefly connected to agricultural authenticity. An elderly gentleman selling apples talked me through ten different varieties with the passion most people reserve for football, and I left with far more apples than any reasonable person needs for a short stay.

Back at the house I kept things simple. Good bread, good cheese, those eggs fried properly this time with the yolks still runny. I ate my breakfast on the little terrace with a cup of coffee and watched a heron stand motionless in the drainage ditch across the way, clearly a better fisherman than I would ever be. For lunch I made sandwiches with thick slabs of the smoked sausage and mustard sharp enough to clear your sinuses, the sort of straightforward food that needs no improvement.

By the third day I had found my rhythm. I discovered a bakery that did these extraordinary almond pastries, flaky and sweet without being cloying, and I became embarrassingly regular there. The woman started recognising me and would have my usual ready before I reached the counter, which I told myself was charming rather than slightly shameful. I cooked a proper stamppot one evening, mashed potatoes with kale and that same smoked sausage stirred through, and it actually worked. The potatoes were cooked, the kale had not turned to mush, and I ate two enormous portions feeling genuinely pleased with myself.

I also found a tiny place doing fresh herring, the Dutch way with raw onion and pickles, which I ate standing at a counter by the canal like a local. Well, like a local who kept wobbling the fish and dropping bits of onion down his shirt, but I got there in the end. The fish was silky and rich, completely different from anything I would grab at home, and I went back the next day for more.

The self-catering aspect became the real joy of the trip. Not because I became any great chef, but because the ingredients were so good that doing very little to them felt like enough. I made simple soups with vegetables from that same honesty box, boiled eggs for breakfast, cheese and apple lunches that needed no preparation at all. I drank local beer in the evenings and ate those almond pastries for no reason beyond the fact that they were there and I was weak.

On my final morning I packed up slowly, leaving the kitchen cleaner than I found it and the fridge emptied of everything but a sad-looking tomato and some leftover mustard. I drove away past the same drainage ditches and the same determined geese, already thinking about when I might return. Next time I would find the right Oosterwolde on the first attempt, I told myself, though part of me suspected I probably would not.