Join us for our Open Evening at Leiths on Thursday 5th February 2026, 6:30–8:30pm, and discover how the Culinary Diploma can launch your career in food.
Join us for our Open Evening at Leiths on Thursday 5th February 2026, 6:30–8:30pm, and discover how the Culinary Diploma can launch your career in food.
After a year at university, Sam Holland realised that pursuing his lifelong love of cooking for his family through the Culinary Diploma was a better route for him.
‘My mum and dad went to an open day and said, “Sam, this is brilliant. You’ll love it.”
‘And it turned out I was the perfect blueprint for a Leiths student. I signed up and had the best academic year of my life. And, you know, initially I’d never wanted to be a chef’.
Just five years on from graduating from the Diploma mid-pandemic, Sam’s new book, Kitchen Kickstart, is, according to the debut author, ‘speaking to a new generation of home cooks’.
The book, which contains chapters like ‘Monday Meal Prep’, ‘Fakeaway Favourites’ and ‘Hangover Helpers’, is aimed at school leavers taking their first steps into the adult world.
‘I wanted to make sure that when I was writing the book, I assumed the reader doesn’t know anything about cooking,’ Sam explained.
The book is being released on August 28 and is currently available for pre-order.
‘The plan was that when everyone heads up to uni this September, they’ve got a car full of things and hopefully my book is amongst all the pots, pans and pillowcases’.
There’s a 15-minute Thai Green Curry and Pork and Pineapple Tacos. He also mentions some tantalising apple and cinnamon puff pastry slices (‘six ingredients, sling them in the oven and they look a lot more fancy than they actually are’). And with the tacos, any leftover pork and pineapple can be used in Sam’s Drunken Noodles.
‘The most important thing for me when developing the recipes was thinking “What do university students want to eat?”’
He reflects on his own year spent at university. ‘I was pretty shocked at the level of cooking from my fellow classmates at university.
‘My university experience was,’ he pauses, ‘I don’t want to say a waste of time, but I was shocked at the level of lecturing, teachers showing up and just putting on a movie. And none of them really impressed me.
‘That took a complete 180 when I went to Leiths because all the teachers are people who I really admired and really could learn from.
‘The examinations were fantastic. The wine course was great. The lectures and improving your palate by tasting the professional’s food.
‘I remember having a fantastic time and the skills I learned at Leiths – like de-boning a chicken for a chicken salad for my girlfriend – I’m still using to this day’.
And those skills he learned at Leiths have informed Sam’s self-described style of ‘simple ingredients, cooked really well’.
When he was offered a book deal originally, Sam turned it down.
‘I didn’t feel like I was ready. I felt like I had more to prove. At the time, I said to Dan Hurst from Penguin that I see that having a cookbook is kind of the pinnacle of what you can achieve.
‘But when I did receive the first copy of the book, we kind of had to clear the morning schedule and get a cup of tea, sit down and go through the book.
‘The feeling I got when I finished was pretty incredible. It has been such a massive task and to look back at all the recipes that I’m proud of was a bit of a moment for me’.
The chef and content creator nods to some key ingredients in his recipe for success. He adopted a collaborative approach to writing the book with established recipe developer Hanna Miller. And he acknowledges that the impressive audience he’s built online is, in part, due to the ‘unique position of having a very famous, successful older brother which has helped me massively’.
The brother in question is actor Tom Holland, who plays Spider-Man, and according to Sam, food plays a huge role in Holland family life.
‘I’m lucky enough to have been brought up in a lovely family where we had dinner around the table every night, sharing stories.
‘Anything I do is an extension of my family and, you know, my granny Tess’s Irish soda bread is in the book and her Irish fruit loaf is in there too.
‘I did send the recipes to all my brothers who are all useless in the kitchen, just to make sure that they’re easy enough to follow. I’m excited for them to cook for a change instead of me cooking every Sunday.’
Kitchen Kickstart is out on August 28. Pre-order your copy here.