I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I put the sat nav postcode into my phone and ended up in a roundabout near Apeldoorn, circling what I later learned was the same tulip field three times. The mishap, if you can call forty minutes of increasingly tense marital navigation a mishap, was entirely my fault. I had typed "Doornspijk" correctly but somehow added an extra digit to the house number, which led us to a very nice man called Henk who was expecting a plumber. His wife offered us coffee while I pretended this was all part of the plan.

When we finally found the proper cottage, tucked between Elburg and the Veluwe forests, I was starving and slightly humiliated. The property sat at the end of a gravel track, all dark wood and proper Dutch steep stairs, with a kitchen that immediately made me feel inadequate. There was an actual Aga-style range, copper pans hanging like trophies, and a herb garden outside the back door that looked suspiciously well-tended. I had packed pasta and a jar of Lloyd Grossman sauce. This was going to be a week of culinary education, whether I liked it or not.

The nearest supermarket was an Albert Heijn in Elburg, about ten minutes by car, and I made it my mission to shop properly. This lasted approximately until I reached the cheese aisle, where I stood paralysed by choice for so long that a kind elderly gentleman took pity and selected a mature Boerenkaas for me. I also bought proper butter, actual vegetables that required peeling, and something called rookworst that I initially mistook for a small weapon. The bakery next door sold appelflappen still warm from the fryer, and I ate two in the car park before remembering I had supposedly come for dinner ingredients.

That first evening I attempted stamppot, because when in Rome and all that. My mash turned out slightly grey and the kale had the texture of wet newspaper, but my partner was kind about it and we ate the whole thing with the rookworst sliced on top, which covered a multitude of sins. The local beer from a nearby Veluwe brewery helped considerably. I had bought four bottles and we finished three between us, which says something about either the beer or my cooking.

The Saturday market in Elburg became my weekend ritual. I would cycle there along the flat Dutch lanes, basket wobbling on my handlebars, and return with eggs from a farm stall, vegetables I could not name, and occasionally fresh herring that I ate standing up at a street cart like a local. The fishmonger found my attempts at Dutch endearing, which is polite Dutch for "terrible." I once asked for "twee haring" and received three, but decided not to argue with a man holding a very sharp knife.

By midweek I had progressed to making proper pannenkoeken in the cottage's excellent pan, thin and enormous, filled with bacon and syrup in the traditional style. My first attempt stuck to the ceiling when I tried the theatrical flip. My second was edible. My third was genuinely good, eaten in the garden with the evening sun on my face and a sense of accomplishment that far outweighed the actual achievement.

The local butcher in Doornspijk village, barely five minutes walk, became my favourite discovery. He sold handmade frikandellen that I told myself were for research purposes, and proper rookvleisch that I learned to cook slowly with onions and apples. I made a stew one rainy afternoon that filled the cottage with smells so authentically Dutch that I half expected a wooden clog inspection.

I left with recipes scrawled on receipts, a new appreciation for butter in quantities that would alarm a cardiologist, and trousers that no longer fastened comfortably. The final morning I made one last market trip for stroopwafel to take home, ate two on the drive to the ferry, and spent the crossing planning when I might return to make another attempt at that stamppot.