Ahh France, since the first time Dad and I watched his Ford Anglia slowly winched onto the cross-channel boat (roll on, roll off, roll over, ferries hadn’t been invented at the time) I’ve loved the place. So much so in fact that I spent a large proportion of my time at university doing a degree in the language, but the sad truth is that the affair has reached a stumbling point and that point is the prices.

‘They’re too big!” Chef Franco Taruschio, the chef who will always have ‘Walnut Tree’ in any sentence that follows his name, is giving me the full benefit of his sixty-nine years of culinary experience. ‘You want a size seven,” he says gazing at my feet, ‘ but they’re still a nice pair of shoes.” As we walk out the shoe shop and join the Italians promenading up the main street of Porto Recanati in La Marche, Italy, his squat figure makes his wife Ann giggle. ‘Here we are in Italy and he still looks and dresses like a Welsh farmer,” she says fondly.

With snow thick on the ground in London, buses off the road and the pavement an ice rink we head somewhere warmer, Scotland, to be introduced to the dubious delights of the Haggis Bonbon.

It’s past 2pm on a Monday and the Bavarian Beerhouse is quiet, which is a rarity in a place known for uproarious good times. At one table three people are sitting with the funny Bavarian hats the bar sells on their heads, they seem unselfconsciously determined to enjoy the experience even if it makes them look like Hobbits on a geography field-trip. Vast glasses of beer are in front of them, even vaster plates of sausages and ham hocks are there too. They have the air of very happy punters.

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Foodepedia travels to southwest France to learn more about the most heart friendly wines in the world – and to influence their future blends.

Madame Zingara’s is an exciting, bohemian circus experience and one with fine dining to accompany the cabaret. Nick Harman went backstage to see how the kitchen pulls off a major meal every night.

‘A good cookery book should always be covered in food stains,’ laughs Trina Hahnemahn when I tell her about the sorry state of my copy of her excellent The Scandinavian Cookbook. It’s a book so packed with recipes that leap off the page and demand to be cooked that I’ve had a hard time keeping my sticky hands off of it.

We all love a golden, crunchy roast potato and never more so than on Christmas Day. Whether it’s a turkey, pork, goose or beef dinner the one thing we all agree on is that it’s not right without a roast tater or two. But how do you make them perfect? Check in any recipe book, or ask your mum, and you’ll get all kinds of varying opinion on cooking times, type of spud and what kind of fat to use. At this time of year it seemed vital that we nail this dilemma quickly so we decided to get a top chef to cook up a pile of spuds to try and work out once and for all how best to get a right roast result.

Gordon Ramsay has memorably pulled a noodle, as we now know of course, but today is my chance to try my hand at this genuinely ancient art. Teddy K.C Chen a Director of Inn Noodle confirms the noodle’s long history while letting a small grin crack his otherwise stern face, ‘Italians think they invented pasta and spaghetti, huh? Stolen from Chinese!”