I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I tried to unlock the wrong front door. We'd been driving from Palma airport for about forty minutes, winding through the kind of sun-baked Majorcan countryside that makes you forget you left home in a drizzle, and I was absolutely ravenous. The key wouldn't turn. I jiggled it. I swore at it. I nearly kicked the door of what turned out to be the neighbour's nearly identical townhouse before my partner gently pointed at the number plate on the wall. Our actual place was three doors down. Not my finest moment, but in my defence, I was running on airport coffee and a packet of crisps.

La Fuente de Montuiri sits in the heart of the village, and the first thing that hit me when we finally got through the right door was the smell of jasmine from the courtyard. The second thing was the kitchen. Properly equipped, blessedly cool, with terracotta tiles underfoot and a view straight out to the pool. I opened the fridge and found nothing but a lonely ice tray. This, I decided, was a situation requiring immediate action.

Montuiri's small supermarket, just round the corner on Carrer de sa Creu, became my second home that week. The first morning I wandered in still half-asleep and emerged with sobrassada, Mahon cheese, tomatoes that actually smelled of something, and a bottle of local red I couldn't pronounce. The woman at the till smiled at my attempts to say "gracies" with a proper Catalan lilt and corrected me kindly. By day three she was greeting me like a regular.

The kitchen at La Fuente de Montuiri has one of those gas hobs that looks straightforward until you realise the ignition has a personality of its own. My first attempt at a simple tortilla became a frantic dance of clicking matches and muttered prayers. The resulting dish was more scrambled egg than Spanish classic, but eaten by the pool with crusty bread and olive oil, it tasted like absolute triumph. We photographed it like it was Michelin-starred. It was not.

The village market happens on Tuesdays, and I approached it with the seriousness of a competitive sport. Local almonds, still in their fuzzy green husks. Apricots so ripe they bruised at a stern glance. A wheel of cheese from a man who'd made it himself and communicated this through elaborate pointing and a phrasebook I'd downloaded in a panic. I spent seventeen euros and carried it all back like treasure, already planning a lunch that would take three hours and several glasses of wine.

The barbecue area by the pool became my evening domain. I am not a natural grill master. My first attempt at lamb sobrassada skewers flared up dramatically, sending me leaping backward with tongs raised like a defensive weapon. The charred results were actually rather good, in a rustic sense, and we ate them with escalivada I'd roasted in the oven, the peppers and aubergine collapsing into silky sweetness with nothing more than salt, oil, and time.

What I loved about self-catering at La Fuente was the rhythm it imposed. Morning coffee on the terrace, planning the day's food. The slow walk to the shops, the deliberation over which tomatoes looked best, the inevitable purchase of something I'd never cooked before. One evening I attempted frito mallorquin using a recipe I'd found scrawled on a card in the kitchen drawer. It involved liver, which I do not normally eat, and potatoes, which I do. The potatoes were perfect. The liver was... an education.

By the end of the week, my partner noted that I'd stopped trying to photograph every meal and simply ate them instead. The kitchen had become familiar, the hob's quirks understood, the local shop's stock memorised. On our final morning I made a proper tortilla, flipping it with confidence onto a plate that had seen a week's worth of experiments. It held together. It looked right. We ate it in silence on the terrace, watching the village wake up, already planning what we'd cook when we came back.