I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I tried to unlock the wrong cabin. There we were, after six hours of driving from Gothenburg, standing on the decking of what I was absolutely convinced was our Vita Sand cottage in Kalmar, jiggling a key that steadfastly refused to turn. My partner, ever patient, let me struggle for a good three minutes before pointing at the number on the doorframe. Turned out ours was two doors down. The neighbours, if they were watching, must have had a right laugh.

The proper cottage, when we finally reached it, smelled of pine and recent cleaning, which is exactly what you want from a Swedish holiday let. I dumped the bags and made straight for the kitchen, because six hours on the road had reduced me to a state where I would have eaten the furniture. The kitchen was surprisingly well-equipped, though I immediately spotted the electric hob and felt a small flutter of panic. I am a gas man through and through. My first attempt at frying even a simple egg would, I suspected, end in tragedy.

We had stopped at an ICA supermarket in Kalmar on the way, me filling the trolley with a reckless enthusiasm that comes from holiday optimism. Cloudberries, because I had read about them. Vasterbotten cheese, because the name sounded impressive. A lump of smoked salmon that cost more than I care to admit. Some strange pickled herring that my partner eyed with the sort of suspicion usually reserved for my cooking. And potatoes, obviously. The Swedes know their potatoes, and I was not about to disrespect that.

That first evening, I attempted what I grandly called a "Smaland-inspired supper." The potatoes went into a pot with a bay leaf I had found at the back of the cupboard, probably left by some previous guest with more sense than me. The salmon I intended to warm gently. What actually happened was that I got distracted unpacking and returned to a kitchen smelling of slightly scorched dairy. The cream sauce had separated. The potatoes were edible but firm in a way that suggested they needed another twenty minutes. The salmon, salvaged from my incompetence, was actually rather good with just a squeeze of lemon and some dill I had nicked from a pot outside the kitchen window. We ate on the little wooden deck as the light faded, me apologising between mouthfuls, my partner kindly insisting it was lovely really.

Morning brought a trip to Kalmar's Saturday market, which I had read about in a dog-eared guidebook from the cottage shelf. We walked the twenty minutes along the coast path, me still full of culinary ambition. The market was modest, honest, the sort of place where people actually shop rather than browse ironically. I bought fresh new potatoes from a woman who explained, in excellent English, that they were "the first of the season" with a pride that made me feel I was participating in something significant. A loaf of dark rye bread. Some local honey that tasted faintly of the forest. Eggs with feathers still stuck to them, which I took as a guarantee of authenticity.

Back at the cottage, I made what I can only describe as a heroic breakfast. The eggs, fried slowly on that treacherous electric hob with butter from the market, were genuinely superb. The rye bread, thickly sliced and toasted, had a depth of flavour that made me question every loaf I had ever bought in a British supermarket. I ate three slices with just the honey, standing at the kitchen window, watching a pair of ducks paddle about in the reeds. My partner had the sense to make coffee in the proper percolator, strong and slightly bitter, which cut through the sweetness perfectly.

Lunch became our main meal most days. The cottage had a small barbecue on the decking, and I became slightly obsessed with mastering it. There is something deeply satisfying about cooking outdoors in Sweden, where the air smells of pine and the sea and something else I could never quite identify. I grilled herring one afternoon, having watched a YouTube video with the confidence of a man who has never actually grilled herring before. It stuck to the grill. It fell apart. I served it anyway, with those new potatoes boiled simply and dressed with butter and dill, plus a sharp cucumber salad I had improvised from the remains of the ICA shop. We ate it with our fingers, mostly, picking out the edible bits and laughing at the charred remains.

The local fish shop in Kalmar harbour became my favourite place. A taciturn man ran it, who gradually warmed to my persistent attempts to buy whatever was freshest. He recommended garfish one day, which I had never heard of, and which turned out to be long and thin and slightly alarming to prepare. I grilled them whole, heads and all, feeling very Nordic and authentic. They tasted faintly of asparagus, bizarrely, and we ate them with our fingers on the beach, watching the Oland bridge disappear into haze.

By the end of the week, my cooking had improved marginally, or perhaps I had simply lowered my standards. I made a respectable fish soup on the final evening, using stock from the bones of that garfish, potatoes, a splash of cream, and a handful of wild garlic I had foraged from a patch near the water. It was not sophisticated. It was not pretty. But sitting on that deck with a bowl of something I had actually managed not to ruin, the sky turning pink over the Baltic, I felt a contentment that no restaurant could have provided.

We finished the Vasterbotten cheese that night, crumbling the last bits over crackers with the final dregs of a decent red wine. I had learned that Swedish cooking, at least at my level, is mostly about very good ingredients treated simply and not being too ambitious. The pickled herring remained in the fridge, untouched, a monument to my hubris. Some things, I decided, are best left to people who know what they are doing.

I locked the correct door when we left, which felt like progress of a sort.