The Immigrant Community at Handshake is proud to bring you the Handshake Holiday Cookbook, a collection of recipes sourced, assembled, and designed by our team. The recipes and their stories represent experiences from Handshakers around the world, and this holiday season, we wanted to share them with you. We’ve added a section of visualizations to illustrate what our team likes (and doesn’t like) eating, and the table of contents is playfully inspired by our company values.
To download the cookbook PDF, click here.
Ahead, check out a few sneak peeks at the delicious recipes you'll find in the pages of the Handshake Holiday Cookbook! Thank you to each of you for reading. May you all "Learn, Cook, and Reheat" these recipes in the years to come.
Jamaican Pumpkin Rice (Tiffany Taylor, Education Success)
"Since moving to the US, one of my favorite seasons is Fall and favorite holidays is Halloween (considering I grew up with neither). You can’t imagine my shock when I noticed that pumpkin was considered sweet and used in MANY desserts. In Jamaica it is very much a savory dish found in curries, soups and rices. So the Fall and all things 'pumpkin spice' were very intriguing, new and weird to me—all at the same time. As I was invited to more and more seasonal potlucks and hosting my own Thanksgiving Feasts I wanted to bring a bit of the island to the table. This made me instantly think pumpkin rice which is orange (so would go with my table decor), while also bringing a potentially new pairing to the table for my friends who had several pumpkins pies in the works. To this day the season does not pass without me doing about four batches of this."
Malvani Chicken Curry (Avinash Gosavi, Software Engineering—Mobile)
"My mom used to cook this dish for Sunday lunches. I grew up helping watching over mom cook it, waiting for step three to finish to try those spicy tasty pieces of chicken while it’s being cooked. This recipe is brought to you by a small region of Maharashtra known as Konkan, famous for its seafood dishes. Malvani is just one of the various communities in Konkan."
The Everything Stew (Nico Soldi, Analytics Tech Lead—Data)
"As I write this recipe I just finished making this very stew with a combination of everything I had left in the fridge from a farmers market run a few days ago. That’s the spirit of the stew, you can use the vegetables interchangeably and use it with whatever you have in stock. Highly encourage to serve this over rice to soak up all the stewy goodness. The stew keeps pretty well in the fridge and the flavors intensify the next day."
Baked Apple Crisp (Stephanie Jung, Brand Design Lead—Employer)
"When creating this recipe, I thought about how to put a little twist on the classic Apple Crisp. What else makes classic dishes more fun than making them self-contained, individual servings? Top em off with a scoop of good vanilla ice cream, and enjoy the tender, cinnamon-bathed apples and crumbly crisp topping. This fast, easy, delicious dessert will impress all your holiday guests."
Ramen Fried Rice (Marc Chung, Engineering Manager—Student)
"My youngest son is the pickiest eater you’ll ever meet. In his early school days, he would often come back with his lunch uneaten. I came up with this recipe from two of his loves: rice and ramen. Generally, fried rice is a lot of fun to make. I like to add in leftover vegetables and meats from the week, so no two dishes are the same. Don’t skimp on the soy sauce and sesame oil. They make everything taste way better. This is now my youngest son’s favorite dish and a well loved dish in our home."