I have never been so relieved to see a kettle in my entire life. Three hours of driving from the Eurotunnel, one wrong turn somewhere near Roermond that had me confidently leading my family down a farm track meant for tractors, and a small incident involving a dropped wheelie suitcase and a very deep puddle later, we finally pulled up to our holiday home in Afferden. I stepped out of the car, stretched my legs, and promptly walked into a low-hanging branch. Welcome to Limburg, I thought. Welcome indeed.

The house, I must say, made up for my navigational shame almost immediately. It had that solid, unhurried feel you only really get in this part of the Netherlands, where Belgium and Germany have leaked their influences into the brickwork and the garden seemed to have been growing patiently for decades. My partner gave me that look, the one that says "you got us lost but I'll allow it," and we lugged our bags inside. The kitchen, I noticed with the keen eye of a man who thinks about his stomach before his bed, was properly equipped. Not the sad, token gesture of blunt knives and one bent spatula you sometimes find in rentals, but actual pans, decent knives, and a hob that looked like it meant business.

Within an hour, I had committed my first culinary error. We'd stopped at a supermarket in Venray on the way, and I'd grabbed what I thought were cooking apples for a crumble. They were not cooking apples. They were some local variety meant for eating, crisp and sweet, and they turned to mush the moment they hit heat. My intended triumphant first-night pudding became a sort of apple soup with oat topping. We ate it anyway, standing in the kitchen, laughing at my refusal to read labels properly. The local beer helped. Limburg does excellent beer, and I had bought several varieties, reasoning that research was necessary.

The next morning, properly rested and slightly smug about the excellent coffee I'd made in a proper cafetiere, I walked down to Afferden itself. It's a small place, unhurried, and I found a baker's where I bought still-warm broodjes and some vlaai, that Limburg tart which I have decided is one of humanity's better inventions. Cherry, in this instance, with a proper crumbly pastry base and that distinctive lattice top. I ate half of it on a bench by the road, feeling no shame whatsoever, and brought the rest back for breakfast along with more bread than was strictly necessary.

That afternoon, I attempted my first proper self-catering dinner. The local butcher had these beautiful rookworst sausages, and I'd found potatoes and kale at a small greengrocer. Stamppot, I thought. How hard can it be? The answer, I discovered, is not very hard at all provided you do not get overconfident with the mashing. My first attempt was somewhat rustic, with identifiable chunks of potato still present, but the rookworst saved it entirely. That smoky, dense flavour cut through my incompetence like a kindly teacher correcting a student. We ate it with mustard and more of that excellent beer, and I felt genuinely proud in a way I rarely do with home cooking.

The market in Venlo became my second home, or at least my second kitchen. I went twice during our stay, wandering the stalls with a canvas bag and a growing sense of purpose. The cheese stall alone nearly broke me, with aged Dutch varieties I could not pronounce and samples pressed upon me by a woman who clearly recognised a vulnerable enthusiast. I bought far too much, including something that turned out to be spectacularly strong and required serious bread accompaniment. There were fresh herring too, which I tried at a stall with trepidation and found surprisingly delicious, holding it by the tail and lowering it in the traditional manner while trying not to look like a tourist having his photograph taken.

My most ambitious cooking attempt came on our fourth day. I'd found asparagus, the white kind that the Dutch and Germans go absolutely mad for in season, and I determined to do it properly. Hollandaise sauce, I decided, would be my companion. I have made hollandaise perhaps twice before, both times ending in scrambled eggs. This time, with patience, a double boiler improvised from two of the house's better pans, and a level of concentration I rarely apply to anything, I managed something recognisably sauce-like. The asparagus was perfect, tender and sweet, and I sat there afterwards feeling absurdly accomplished, as if I had personally invented Dutch cuisine rather than simply not ruining excellent ingredients.

Evening meals became our ritual, the kitchen warm and smelling of whatever I had cobbled together. I made a respectable zuurkoolstamppot with the local sauerkraut, which my partner admitted was better than expected given my previous form with cabbage. I grilled fish simply, having learned my lesson about overcomplicating things, and served it with new potatoes and butter. We ate outside when the weather allowed, which it did more often than my British pessimism had prepared me for, and inside with candles when it did not.

The local shops in Afferden and nearby kept me supplied with essentials and temptations alike. I became embarrassingly familiar with the biscuit selection at the village supermarket, particularly the stroopwafels which I attempted to warm over coffee in the proper fashion, usually burning my fingers in the process. There was a small chocolate shop I found on a wandering afternoon, where I bought pralines that disappeared far too quickly and had to be replaced before anyone noticed.

On our final morning, I made breakfast with the last of the bread, the last of the cheese, and a certain melancholy awareness that this temporary kitchen had become more familiar than my own. We packed slowly, ate slowly, and I left the house cleaner than I found it, which is more than I can say for my dignity after that first day. The drive back was uneventful, which I took as a personal victory, and I found myself already planning what I would cook on a return visit, what markets I had missed, what vlaai flavours remained un-sampled.

I am not a natural cook, and I am certainly not a natural navigator, but something about that house in Afferden, about the quiet lanes and the proper kitchen and the excellent local ingredients, made me into something approaching both. The apple soup still haunts me slightly, but even that has become a fond memory, the kind of small disaster that makes a holiday properly yours.