The voting for Chalet Chef 2010 has now closed. We received more than 500 detailed nominations for everyone from individual chalet owners to large ski tour operators. We are now sifting through these nominations to find out which companies deserve to go through to the next phase.

In order to make the nomination process as fair as possible, we will tally up the number of votes for each company and then divide this by the number of chalet beds the company operates. This will ensure that individual chalet companies will stand as much of a chance as the bigger companies offering hundreds of chalet beds in several resorts.

We are now creating a long-list of 12 companies based on this weighted number of votes. All of the nominations for these companies will then be examined by our initial judging panel, comprising online ski correspondent Mark Frary, food and drink editor Nick Wyke and assistant travel editor Ginny McGrath. The panel will examine the comments made in the nominations by readers for each of these 12 companies and pick out those that conform to some criteria that we think are important.

These include:

• a commitment to use fresh, local ingredients wherever possible

• the ability to serve inventive food in the challenging environment of the mountains

• an understanding that guest input and feedback is important in crafting menus.

Based on this information, we will put together our final shortlist of six which will be announced this Friday, 30 October. Three of the six will come from the mass market while three will come from the top end of the market, based on a typical brochure price per person for a week at New Year.

We will then ask the shortlisted companies to nominate one of their chefs or hosts to attend a cook-off at London’s Food at 52 cookery school, run by John Benbow, on Monday 16 November. Companies will be required to nominate a chef or host who has been with the company for at least one season and who is not the company’s executive chef or similar. The judge’s decision on eligibility in this regard is final.

The nominated chef will then be asked to create a chalet menu on a fixed budget of £20 for the mass market companies and £30 for the upmarket companies. Full details will be announced this Friday.

Don’t forget that the cook-off will have a special guest judge, the celebrity chef Tom Aikens. Later this week, you can read our interview with Tom and find out where he likes to ski. You will also get to taste one of his favourite ski comfort foods; he has agreed to share his personal recipe for macaroni cheese. Our tummies are already rumbling.