Tom Aikens may be a master chef but he has another great love in life – mountains. With his twin brother, Robert, Aikens, 37, started skiing aged 8 at a dry ski slope just outside Norwich in the days when it snowed during the Norfolk winter. “Sometimes we even had powder,” he says.

It was on his first first proper trip to the Alps and the small French resort of Puy St Vincent that he became smitten. He was 12 and the brothers were “majorly overexcited”.

“We skied from dawn till dusk. One evening we followed a group of children who carried on skiing down the mountain after the lifts were closed. Being local, they knew where they were going; we didn’t have a clue. We carried on and it started getting dark. We started walking back up and found ourselves in a thigh-high snowdrift. Panicking, we called for help. About 20 minutes later we heard our father calling. We had never been so pleased to hear his voice, though we got the bollocking of all time.”

It did not put off the family. Until the twins were 18 they went every year, always drawn back to France. Avoriaz and La Clusaz were family favourites but it was Megève that captured Aikens’s imagination.

Years later he went back to visit and discovered his all-time favourite mountain restaurant, La Ferme de Mon Père. A mix of local ingredients and traditions and cutting-edge culinary skills, the restaurant is in an old barn with glass panels on the walls and floor, “where you can see chickens, goats and cattle”. Even though Aikens knew he wanted to be a chef when he was 12, food was not that important to him as a skiing teenager. “On the mountain when I was young, food was just the fuel I needed to keep on charging down.”

His favourite mountain treats are French onion soup and hot chocolate with frothed cream on top. “They taste better on mountains than anywhere else,” he says. But the thought of plastic frankfurters wagging at him from inside a limp bap still makes him shudder.

So does the memory of his wipe-out last Christmas in Idaho’s Sun Valley. Skiing with his wife, Amber, and his brother.

“I am one of those skiers who love flying down the mountain, whereas my wife is very stylish and controlled. I used to love watching Franz Klammer bombing down the Hahnenkamm on Ski Sunday. My brother and I were having a race and a little kid cut across the piste. I had to swerve right to avoid him and I had two choices; ski into a snow machine or a mogul field. I chose the bumps.

“My tips plunged straight into the first bump and sent me catapulting forward out of my skis. I somersaulted about 5m and landed head first into a mogul. Thank God I was wearing a helmet. Luckily I walked away from it, even though I was seeing stars.”

Aikens is swapping restaurants for chalets for a week this winter and will be cooking in four of Descent International’s Engadine properties during the week beginning February 3. www.descent.co.uk