I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I tried to unlock the wrong villa. There we were, me and my partner, standing at the door of what I was absolutely convinced was Can Maimo Nou, jiggling a key that refused to turn, while a very patient German couple watched from their actual terrace three doors down. Turns out I'd misread the house number in my excitement and we were essentially attempting to burgle a stranger's holiday home. Not my finest moment, and certainly not the relaxed arrival I'd pictured.

Once we finally located the correct property, tucked away in the quiet lanes near Santanyi, the whole mood shifted. Can Maimo Nou sits in that lovely pocket of southeast Majorca where the countryside feels properly rural but you're never more than a few minutes from something worth eating. And honestly, after that key fiasco, I needed feeding.

The kitchen at the villa became my unexpected obsession. I'd packed with grand ambitions of cooking everything from scratch, imagining myself as some sort of Mediterranean domestic goddess. The reality was rather more chaotic. My first attempt at a tortilla espanola ended up as scrambled eggs with potato, which we ate on the terrace with rather too much local wine and a lot of laughter at my expense. The pan was a write-off. I have new respect for anyone who can flip those things without disaster.

Santanyi market on Wednesday morning saved me from myself. The square fills with stalls that make you want to buy everything and cook nothing, just graze your way through the morning. I came back with sobrasada that stained everything it touched a magnificent orange, proper Mallorcan cheese that smelled like it meant business, and tomatoes that actually tasted of something. The baker there does these spiral pastries called ensaimadas that I told myself were for breakfast but rarely survived past the car park.

The local supermarkets became my hunting grounds. You haven't lived until you've watched a British person try to ask for fresh squid in broken Spanish while pointing enthusiastically at a fish counter. I managed to procure some excellent prawns this way, and a very confused fishmonger who probably still tells the story. Back at the villa, I attempted a proper paella on the outdoor grill. It was edible. That is the highest praise I will give myself. My partner was kind enough to call it "rustic" which I have learned is code for "a bit burnt on the bottom."

We found a brilliant little fruit stall on the road towards Cala d'Or where an elderly woman sold melons that were so ripe they practically poured themselves into your bag. I ate one entirely with a spoon on our sun lounger, juice running down my arm, feeling very pleased with my life choices. The villa's outdoor dining area saw some genuinely lovely evenings, once I stopped trying to be ambitious and just grilled fish simply, dressed salad properly with good olive oil, and let the ingredients do the work.

There was a moment of gentle realisation somewhere around day five, picking figs from a tree near the villa boundary, that I'd spent the entire holiday thinking about what to eat next. Not in a greedy way, but in that lovely Mediterranean rhythm where meals punctuate the day and give it structure. I am not a natural cook, and I am certainly not a natural relaxed person, but something about that kitchen and those markets and the slow pace of Santanyi in late summer brought out a version of me that didn't rush, didn't overcomplicate, and could laugh when the bread didn't rise.

On our last evening I made a simple tomato bread, pan con tomate, with bread from the local bakery, those market tomatoes, garlic rubbed on roughly, and salt. It took five minutes. It was probably the best thing I cooked all fortnight. Sometimes the lesson is that you're trying too hard, and the good stuff is simpler than you think. I left Can Maimo Nou with a slightly ruined frying pan, a new appreciation for sobrasada, and the certain knowledge that I'd return mostly for the food and the forgiving kitchen that let me learn slowly.