I should have known the sat nav was up to no good when it tried to send us down what looked like a tractor's private driveway somewhere past Poznan. Three hours of motorway had already done my head in, and my partner's "scenic route" suggestion was wearing thin. We were hunting for Wilcze, a little holiday cottage in Wielkopolska that promised peace, quiet, and apparently a very well-equipped kitchen. The mishap came when I confidently marched up to the wrong door, armed with a bag of shopping and a phrasebook greeting, only to be met by a very confused Polish grandmother and her even more confused goat. Wrong house. Right village, mind, but about two hundred metres off. I backed away apologising in what I hoped was Polish but was probably just loud English with a question mark at the end.

The actual cottage, when we found it, was a proper charmer. Red roof, wooden beams, and a kitchen that made me immediately want to cook something ambitious. This was dangerous. I am not a good cook. I am an enthusiastic cook, which is entirely different and significantly more hazardous.

We'd stopped at a market in Wronki on the way, a proper local affair where I bought vegetables I couldn't name and cheese that the vendor insisted was "typical." I took her word for it. My bag contained potatoes that were still covered in actual soil, carrots with their tops on like leafy hairstyles, and some white sausage that I later learned was called biala kielbasa. The plan was simple: make a traditional Wielkopolska dinner, impress my partner, become the sort of person who casually cooks regional Polish cuisine.

The kitchen at Wilcze was genuinely lovely. Big wooden table, decent knives, a stove that looked like it meant business. I laid out my market haul like I was on a television cookery programme. The reality was considerably less polished. I had not accounted for the fact that Polish sausage needs specific preparation, that the potatoes here are starchier than I'm used to, and that my phrasebook did not include "how do I rescue this." The first attempt at placki ziemniaczane, those potato pancakes I'd read about, resulted in something that can only be described as potato cement. It held together with grim determination and tasted mainly of regret.

My partner, bless her, ate three of them and claimed they were "rustic." This is relationship code for "I love you enough to suffer."

The next morning I walked to the little shop in the village, a proper local place where I pointed at things and smiled hopefully. Came back with fresh eggs, proper butter, and some smoked bacon that smelled like it could solve most of life's problems. Breakfast was fried eggs with that bacon, still in the pan at the table because the cottage kitchen made me want to linger there. We ate in silence except for the occasional happy noise, the sort that only really good bacon can produce.

I tried the market in Szamotuly on the second day, a slightly bigger town maybe four miles off. This one had bread stalls that made me want to weep. Proper sourdough rounds, still warm, with crusts that crackled when you squeezed them. I bought one the size of a steering wheel and carried it back to Wilcze like a trophy. That evening we did the simple thing right: just the bread, some of that market cheese which turned out to be twarog, soft and slightly tangy, and tomatoes that actually tasted of something. A bottle of local beer from the village shop. Nothing cooked, nothing attempted beyond slicing. It was probably the best meal of the whole trip.

The kitchen saw one more of my experiments before we left. I found a recipe for zurek, the sour rye soup, in a leaflet at the cottage. Bought the zurek base from the shop, added my leftover white sausage, a boiled egg, and more hope than skill. It was actually decent. Not authentic, not proper, but decent. My partner had seconds. I took a photo for evidence that I can occasionally produce edible food in a foreign kitchen with ingredients I cannot properly name.

We left Wilcze with the remaining half of the steering wheel bread, some cheese wrapped in paper, and a new appreciation for keeping things simple. I still cannot cook Polish food properly. But I can shop for it enthusiastically, fry bacon adequately, and know when to stop trying and just eat bread. Some holidays teach you grand things about yourself. This one taught me that I am at my best when I am not attempting potato pancakes.