I had convinced myself that travelling with just hand luggage to Gran Canaria was a brilliant idea right up until the moment I tried to fit my duty-free chorizo into the same bag as my carefully rolled t-shirts. The chorizo won, briefly, and I spent ten minutes at Gatwick rearranging my pants around a sausage. This set the tone nicely for a week of food-related chaos in Las Palmas.

The flight itself was uneventful, which I consider a personal victory given my track record with airport sandwiches. Landing in Gran Canaria felt like stepping into a warm oven, the sort of heat that makes you immediately regret wearing a jumper "just in case." I collected my hire car, a cheerful little thing that wheezed up hills like me after a flight of stairs, and headed for the apartment in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

The property sits in a proper residential area, not one of those soulless tourist strips where every restaurant serves chips with everything. My first mission was the Mercado del Puerto, which I had read about in a guidebook that I subsequently left on the plane. Memory served well enough, though, and I found myself wandering through a cathedral of food stalls, each more tempting than the last. I bought bread that was still singing from the oven, tomatoes that actually smelled of something, and cheese from a man who spoke no English and patiently endured my GCSE Spanish. I asked for "un poco" and received what I can only describe as a family-sized portion. We understood each other perfectly.

That first evening I attempted to cook in the apartment kitchen, which was better equipped than my own flat back in Manchester. I had visions of a simple Spanish omelette, the sort of thing that looks effortless in cookery programmes. My attempt resembled something a tired student might produce at two in the morning. The problem, I told myself, was unfamiliar hob temperatures. The problem, if I am honest, was overconfidence and insufficient egg-beating. I ate it anyway, standing at the little balcony with a glass of supermarket wine that cost less than a London coffee, and felt genuinely content. There is something about eating your own mediocre food in a warm foreign place that feels like proper holiday freedom.

The next morning I found a local cafe where the regulars seemed to have assigned seats. I ordered a cortado and watched a man read the same newspaper page for twenty minutes. My tostada con tomate arrived, and I understood immediately that I had been doing tomatoes wrong my entire life. The bread was rubbed with garlic, the tomato was grated fresh, the olive oil was peppery and green. I went back the following morning, and the morning after that, until the woman behind the counter stopped asking what I wanted.

I discovered the Mercado de Vegueta later in the week, older and more chaotic than Mercado del Puerto. Here I bought papas arrugadas, those wrinkly little potatoes boiled in seawater, and a pot of mojo sauce that made my eyes water in the best possible way. I also bought plantains, confusing them with bananas, and spent an embarrassing amount of time wondering why they would not ripen in my fruit bowl. A kindly neighbour, I suspect, took pity on my daily prodding and left me a handwritten note explaining the difference. I fried them that evening with a tentative heart and they were magnificent, sweet and starchy and completely unlike anything I would attempt at home.

The apartment's location meant I could walk to small supermarkets when inspiration struck, or more often when I had forgotten some essential ingredient. I became familiar with the Spanish crisp aisle, which is a journey in itself, and developed strong opinions about tinned octopus that I did not know I held. One evening I attempted to recreate a fish stew I had eaten at a harbour restaurant, using fish I could not properly identify and stock made from a cube I found at the back of a cupboard. It was not the same. It was not even similar. But I ate it on the balcony watching the last light fade over the city, and there was a particular happiness in the attempt.

I left Gran Canaria with my clothes smelling faintly of garlic and paprika, my hand luggage somehow heavier than when I arrived, and a new appreciation for eating simply and often. The chorizo, incidentally, made it home intact, though slightly misshapen from its journey among the socks.