Sam is cooking up a storm as he stakes his seat at top table

Unlike other students in the city who this week woke up to Freshers’ Week hangovers, Sam has a bona fide excuse for the extra long lie in bed. After all, it’s been an exhausting few weeks.

First – and perhaps most bizarrely for a 21-year-old third-year Edinburgh University politics student – he’s had his latest cook book to finish off. This one is his sixth, the latest, he hopes, in a string of top-selling cookery tomes to bear his young name.

Add to that the stress of a move into a new student pad to organise – fittingly for a foodie like Sam, it’s a stone’s throw from one of Edinburgh’s best-loved eateries, Valvona and Crolla – plus a trip to London for a photoshoot, well, it’s little wonder young Sam is worn out.

“It’s been a busy time,” he later reveals in a drawling, sluggish manner that suggests while he’s now physically entered wide awake mode there’s a slight time delay, which means his verbal skills are still lingering somewhere in sleepville.

Yet, while he may sound in danger of nodding off, there’s no escaping the fact that Edinburgh-based Sam is something of a red hot culinary sensation, a combination of fresh-faced youth, teenage girl fantasy good looks and a flair for bish-bash-bosh style of cooking that has seen him billed as the next Jamie Oliver.

Yes, he may well be studying politics at university, but there’s a serious chance that’s a mere safety net to what is likely to be a career as the next high-profile celebrity chef.

Today he’s travelling back to Edinburgh University from that London shoot where he posed and pouted for pictures for his latest book of recipes. Entitled Virgin to Veteran Cookery Masterclass, it’s billed as a mix of easy to more challenging dishes interspersed with handy kitchen tips and advice – the very thing an anxious mum might well want to pop into her son or daughter’s case as they head off for their first experience of life in a student pad.

If said youngster is particularly lucky, they’ll find themselves with a Sam Stern-style flatmate, a food lover whose idea of student nosh is about as far removed as possible from the typical beans on toast, fried pizza and, for those marking a really special occasion, chicken tikka masala from the takeaway. For Sam, a cookery sensation since he was just 14 years old, is not the type to open a tin, insert a fork and call it dinner.

“I had one flatmate who lived off nothing but baked beans and Chinese takeaways for a fortnight,” recalls Sam with a nauseated groan as he recalls not only the woeful diet but the unpleasant after-effects it brought with it. “After two weeks he was complaining of feeling horrendous. He felt full of toxins and just generally unwell.

“I know it’s not easy when you’ve not got a lot of money, but students don’t have to eat things like that. We can have fairly healthy stuff that tastes good, and doesn’t cost any more.

“Simple things, like pasta with various sauces and toppings which you can bring together really easily. Or roast chicken, have it one night for dinner and use the rest for sandwiches. It’s not that difficult.”

Easy, perhaps, for Sam. The youngest of five children, he grew up watching his mum Susan thrash around the kitchen of their Yorkshire home creating a menu of different meals to cater for her children’s diverse requirements.

“Three of my sisters are vegetarians, and my older brother would only eat meat,” recalls Sam, whose first cookbook, Cooking up a Storm, was penned with a little help from her when he was just 14 years old and went on to be an international bestseller. “It meant there was always lots of different things going down at dinner time and I’d be drafted in to the kitchen to help out.

“Mum’s a good cook, so I learned from her.”

One of his earliest memories is of helping his mum make treacle bread, swinging opening the oven door to check its progress and being happily overwhelmed by the warm, rich and sweet aroma that engulfed the family kitchen.

By the age of seven he wasn’t just helping in the kitchen, he was doing the cooking too, preparing large joints of meat for roasting and playing around with well-loved cake recipes to create his own versions.

A love of cooking was one thing, a little sibling rivalry thrown in helped create a powerful recipe . . .

“My brother was into cooking too, so there was a lot of competition between us,” Sam adds. “At Christmas we’d compete to see who could make the most impressive dish. Now he’s a doctor so he’s not into the cooking as much, so I reckon I’ve won that contest. On the other hand, he saves lives – maybe there’s no contest really.”

He was barely in his teens when he wrote Cooking up a Storm, a recipe book specifically geared towards teenagers. Soon he’d notched up around 600,000 sales in 16 countries, adding around £30,000 to his bank account.

With that success under his belt, Sam took inspiration from the likes of Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay and set about turning himself into a recognised brand.

These days he has a lively website, video blogs, television guest appearances, a large fan following and, to date, a further four books: Real Food Real Fast; Eat Vegetarian; Get Cooking and, of particular interest to Edinburgh’s new influx of students, the Student Cookbook.

The latter received a particular seal of approval from his hero Gordon Ramsay, who declared it “Brilliant”, warning, “don’t leave home without it”.

No wonder Sam is busy talking about making cooking his career when he finally leaves university. “I love politics but I love cooking too,” he explains. “I thought it made sense to get a degree but there’s so much spare time when I’m not at university that I’m able to balance it with cooking.

“I’d love to do television or run a restaurant of my own. But the main thing is to encourage people to have some fun in the kitchen, to give things a go and not worry if they don’t turn out perfectly,” he says.

“Every recipe in my books I’ve tried and tested at home, I’ll cook from 8am until 7 at night, changing things and following my head and my palate until I get it right. I spend ages imagining what goes with what and how I can change recipes around. And when I’m eating out I like to try different things and take inspiration from it.”

As well as heading back to university and launching a new book, he’s also currently throwing his weight behind volunteering and training charity CSV’s Make a Difference Day, the UK’s biggest single day of volunteering. This year’s event, on Saturday, October 29, focuses on loneliness and Sam’s role has been to create a sumptuous Chocolate Fridge Cake recipe – using Divine Fairtrade milk and dark chocolate, biscuits and flavoured with orange – which the charity hopes participants will whip up in kitchens across the land and deliver to lonely neighbours, the homeless, nursing homes and hospitals or just share with workmates and relatives.

“Food can be a great way to bring people together,” adds Sam, perhaps recalling those lively family meals at home in Yorkshire. “Everyone can get a bit lonely sometimes, and I think this is a brilliant chance to help people feel less isolated.”

So . . . he looks a bit like Justin Beiber, he does work for charity, he’s smart, a bit famous and he cooks. Is there anything young Sam Stern CAN’T do? Sam stifles a yawn and admits he’s exhausted. Like any student, there’s a limit to how far the energy levels can cope.

And perhaps being wide awake half way through the afternoon is asking too much, even for him.

n Each year tens of thousands take part in the CSV Make a Difference Day. Events range from helping out in charity shops to knitting blankets. Register an event or find out more at www.csv.org.uk/ difference or call freephone 0800 284 533. Evening News readers can e-mail [email protected] and request their free Divine Chocolate bar by quoting “CSV Edinburgh”.

Top tips . .

Thanks to the success of his books, Sam can afford to eat out in the kinds of places which other university students can only stand outside and stare into. But he insists that his fellow students don’t have to suffer the horrors of typical cheap and not very cheerful nosh.

Here are his three top tips for cheap and cheerful student meals:

n Get all your mates together, get each to bring one ingredient and make a meal for everyone from what you have. It’s a good way of pooling resources and having a cheap meal.

n Don’t waste money on takeaways. Buy the ingredients and make your own.

n Roast a chicken, have it hot one night and use up the leftovers for sandwiches and snacks.

Tasty toast

French Toast and Blueberries

(serves one)

Ingredients

For the French toast:

2 eggs

2 tbsps sour cream

1 tbsp caster sugar

Good pinch cinnamon

2 slices white bread, crusts removed

A little butter

Maple syrup

Icing sugar

For the blueberry compote:

50g/2oz blueberries 1 tbsp caster sugar Squeeze lemon juice

METHOD: Crack eggs into a shallow bowl and beat in the sour cream, sugar, cinnamon. Dip in the bread and allow to soak, turn, repeat with the second slice. Melt the butter in a frying pan. When bubbling, put the eggy bread in and fry each side till crisp and golden. Meantime, heat the blueberries in a small pan with sugar and lemon juice. Heat until they’re just soft. Serve bread with maple syrup, icing sugar, blueberries. VARIATIONS: Try adding vanilla extract and cinnamon to egg mix. Use brioche instead of bread or swap the sour cream for milk. Fry sandwiches made with sweetened cream cheese, chopped walnuts by soaking them in egg, milk, mustard, and then bake in a greased shallow dish at 180˚C/350˚F/gas 4 for 10 minutes or until cooked through/crispy. Or, simply serve the compôte with ice cream or yogurt.

TOMATO BRUSCHETTA

(serves one)

Ingredients

3 tomatoes

1 garlic clove

Fresh basil, or oregano or thyme

Salt and black pepper

Olive oil

2 slices ciabatta or other open texture bread

Method: Preheat grill or griddle. Chop the tomatoes roughly and put in a bowl. Add chopped garlic, plenty of basil, seasoning and a drizzle of olive oil. Grill or griddle the bread and drizzle oil on the toast. Pile tomato mix on toast and eat immediately.

Recipes from {http://www.samstern.co.uk,www.samstern.co.uk,Sam’s website}