I have never been so relieved to see a kettle in my life. After three hours of driving from Amsterdam, a wrong turn that took us through what I am fairly certain was someone's private farmyard, and a spirited debate about whether the sat nav had developed a personal vendetta against us, we finally pulled up at our Den Oever cottage. I was ready to eat my own arm. Instead, I found a proper kitchen, a welcome pack with actual cheese, and the promise of a proper North Holland food adventure.

The mishap, because there always is one with us, came within ten minutes of arrival. I had spotted a handsome fishmonger's van parked near the harbour and, possessed by some delusion of culinary competence, decided I would cook fresh mackerel for dinner. I marched up, attempted my best phrasebook Dutch, and somehow ended up with two kilos of smoked eel and what I later learned was raw herring. The fishmonger, a kindly man who clearly recognised a clueless Brit when he saw one, patted my shoulder and said something I choose to believe was encouraging. I walked back to the cottage looking like a man who had accidentally joined a very specific Dutch cult.

That evening, we ate bread and cheese for dinner. Very good bread, I should say, from the bakery in Den Oever's small high street, and cheese from the welcome pack that turned out to be a genuinely excellent aged Edam. The eel went into the fridge, where it sat looking at me with quiet judgement for the next forty-eight hours.

The following morning, I found my redemption at the local market. It is not a massive affair, nothing like Amsterdam's tourist traps, but a proper working market where locals buy their vegetables and gossip about the weather. I bought enormous carrots, still muddy, from a farmer who threw in a bunch of herbs when I attempted to pronounce their Dutch name and apparently mangled it so badly he took pity on me. There were tomatoes that actually smelled of tomatoes, which feels rarer than it should, and eggs with feathers still stuck to them. I filled my canvas bag like someone in a lifestyle magazine, then immediately tore the handle because I had overestimated my own strength and underestimated Dutch root vegetables.

Back at the cottage, I attempted a proper North Holland stamppot. For the uninitiated, this is mashed potato with vegetables mixed through, traditionally served with sausage. I had acquired rookworst from a butcher who communicated entirely through meaningful gestures and samples. My stamppot was lumpy. My stamppot was, if I am honest, slightly grey. But by this point in the holiday, after the eel incident and the torn bag and the farmyard detour, I was beyond pride. I piled it onto plates, added a generous dollop of mustard, and we ate it at the cottage's small table with the window open to the harbour. It tasted of effort and butter and the particular satisfaction of feeding yourself in a strange kitchen.

The eel eventually became a rather good pasta sauce, once I stopped trying to be authentically Dutch and just cooked like myself. The herring was gifted to a neighbour, who accepted it with the weary tolerance of someone who has clearly received unwanted fish from tourists before.

What I learned, I suppose, is that self-catering holidays reveal your truest self. At home I am competent enough, reasonably organised, someone who reads recipes properly. Put me in a Den Oever cottage with unfamiliar ingredients and a fishmonger who sees straight through me, and I become a man who eats cheese for dinner and calls it cultural immersion. I would not have it any other way. The bread really was exceptional.