I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I put the hire car's sat nav into Spanish mode and spent twenty minutes driving in circles around Palma airport, convinced I was following directions to Algaida when actually I was being directed to a petrol station called Galp. My partner sat in the passenger seat with that particular expression of British patience, the kind where someone says "no, no, you're doing fine" while gripping the door handle hard enough to leave fingerprints.

By the time we found Ruris, tucked down a lane outside Algaida proper, I was ready to abandon the car and walk. But then we pushed open the gate and there it was: a proper old Mallorcan finca with honey-coloured stone walls and a terrace that looked out over fields of almond trees. The owner had left us a bottle of local red wine and a packet of biscuits, which we demolished within about four minutes, standing in the kitchen in that slightly feral way you do after a stressful journey.

The kitchen, I should say, was the real star of the place. Big farmhouse table, decent gas hob, and a fridge that actually worked properly, unlike the one in our Airbnb in Brighton that froze everything solid. I had grand plans. We'd cook proper Mallorcan food, eat outside every evening, become the sort of people who casually throw together a paella while discussing the olive harvest.

The first morning, we drove into Algaida village to find breakfast. The bakery on Carrer de Sant Pere had ensaimadas still warm from the oven, those spiral pastries dusted with enough icing sugar to constitute a minor health hazard. We ate them in the car like animals, flakes of pastry everywhere, no regrets. Then we found the small mercat municipal, which runs a few mornings a week in a modest square near the church. I bought tomatoes that actually smelled of tomatoes, a bulb of garlic the size of my fist, and some local sobrasada that the vendor wrapped in paper with the efficiency of someone who has done this ten thousand times.

Back at Ruris, I attempted my first proper meal. I had watched a YouTube video about making tumbet, that Mallorcan vegetable gratin, and felt confident. The aubergines from the market were superb, the potatoes less so because I got distracted by a grasshopper on the terrace and let them boil too long. The result was edible but structurally unsound, more of a vegetable collapse than a gratin. We ate it anyway, with the red wine, watching the sun go down behind the Tramuntana mountains in the far distance. It tasted of effort and holiday and slightly too much garlic, which is probably the best any home cooking can hope for.

The next few days developed a rhythm. Mornings for the bakery or the market in nearby Llucmajor when Algaida was closed. I became obsessed with finding the perfect loaf of pa moreno, the dark Mallorcan bread, and developed strong opinions about which bakery in which village produced the best crust. My partner started making pointed comments about carbohydrate intake. I ignored them.

One afternoon we drove to a finca near S'Estanyol that sold olive oil from their own trees, bought a tin of the peppery stuff, and I immediately planned a meal around it that involved bread, tomatoes, and nothing else. Pan con tomate, Mallorca's greatest gift to humanity. I made it every lunch for three days, varying only the amount of salt and whether I could be bothered to find the grater for the tomato or just rubbed it on the bread like a peasant. Both methods work, honestly.

The sobrasada became my other obsession. That soft, spreadable chorizo, flavoured with paprika and fat. I fried it with eggs for breakfast, smeared it on bread for snacks, and on our final evening attempted a more ambitious dish: sobrasada-stuffed chicken thighs with roasted peppers. The kitchen at Ruris saw some action that night. Oil splattered, smoke alarm considered, I reduced some local wine into a sauce that was probably too thin but tasted excellent. We ate at the terrace table with citronella candles burning against the mosquitoes, feeling terribly pleased with ourselves.

Looking back, the holiday wasn't defined by any particular sight or activity. We didn't do the cathedral in Palma, didn't visit any of the big beaches. What I remember is the morning light in that kitchen, the particular satisfaction of cooking with ingredients I'd chosen myself from small village shops, the way a simple meal tastes better when you've made a small mess achieving it. My tumbet never did hold together properly. But sitting there with wine and good bread and someone I love, watching the almond trees shift in the evening breeze, I couldn't have cared less.