I have never been so grateful to see a gravel driveway in all my life. After six hours of driving from Copenhagen Airport, two wrong turns near Helsingborg, and one spectacular incident involving a tub of skyr yoghurt and my lap, I finally pulled up to our little cottage in Hoganas. The yoghurt mishap happened at a petrol station just outside Angelholm. I had been so proud of my sensible Scandinavian breakfast purchase, and then I tore the foil lid off with the enthusiasm of a Labrador discovering a bin bag. White blueberry-flavoured splatter everywhere. My travelling companion just handed me a wet wipe and said nothing. We did not speak of it again.

The cottage sat at the end of a lane bordered by those absurdly neat Swedish hedgerows, all trimmed as if by a hairdresser with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Red wooden walls, white window frames, the whole authentic shebang. I stepped out of the car still smelling faintly of fermented dairy and knew immediately that I would need to make this place feel like home through the universal language of food.

Our first mission was the Hoganas harbour market, which operates on Saturday mornings according to the welcome folder left by the owners. I use the word "folder" loosely; it was more a lovingly compiled testament to local obsession, with annotated maps and handwritten notes about which stall sells the proper herring. We arrived at half past eight, which in Swedish market terms meant we were practically late. Elderly couples in sensible footwear had already formed orderly queues at the fish counters. I have never seen such disciplined queuing in my life. No one pushed. No one hovered uncertainly. It was almost unsettling.

I bought smoked salmon from a man who spoke exactly eleven words of English and communicated the rest through meaningful eyebrow movements. We understood each other perfectly. The salmon was the colour of a proper sunset, not that anaemic orange nonsense you get in British supermarkets. I also acquired a loaf of vortbrod, which the stallholder described as "Christmas bread" despite it being mid-July. I nodded as if this were completely normal.

Back at the cottage, I confronted the kitchen with the confidence of someone who watches cooking programmes but rarely attempts the recipes. The stove was one of those ceramic affairs that looks sleek but behaves with the temperament of a sleepy cat. I attempted to recreate something I had once eaten in Malmo, involving the salmon, some local new potatoes from a honesty box down the lane, and a dill sauce that curdled spectacularly because I got impatient with the heat.

My companion, who had been reading on the terrace, came in to find me swearing at a pan of what looked like cottage cheese with aspirations. "It's meant to be silky," I announced, as if this were obvious. She suggested we call it "rustic" and serve it anyway. We ate on the little wooden table outside, watching the light do that prolonged Scandinavian evening thing where it refuses to properly get dark. The sauce was grainy. The potatoes were genuinely superb, waxy and sweet and tasting properly of something. The salmon needed no improvement. We finished everything and sat there picking at the vortbrod with butter, which I had managed not to ruin.

The next morning I found wild raspberries growing at the edge of the property. I collected them in a mug, feeling absurdly hunter-gatherer, and ate them with the remaining skyr I had wisely purchased in a more robust container. The yoghurt revenge was complete. I was finally eating well in Skane, one small triumph at a time.