“Ours was a chaotic house, without rules, schedules, and one that didn’t feature a consistent or neatly stocked pantry or fridge,” Marcy Goldman explains in her upcoming book The Newish Jewish Cookbook. “Food at home was all over the map.” Some of it came from her bohemian mother and her travels, but many dishes came from the housekeepers and caretakers who looked after her grandmother Iliena, who lost most of her sight in her 20s.

When Marcy was 7-years-old, Iliena, who Marcy called bubby (“I thought that was her actual name,” she says), came to live with them and the two shared a room until Marcy was 11. “She was a lovely, gracious, beautiful person and we were extremely close,” Marcy adds. Iliena had fled to Canada without her family to escape the Cossacks when she was 20.

Their home wasn’t a religious one, but Iliena would “ask me to light my shabbat candles…. [she] must have had some sight left, so she would ask me to turn her to the light.” That’s how Marcy learned the blessing over the candles. That’s where the shabbat celebration, however, would end. Shabbat recipes weren’t part of the Friday custom. For Marcy, who has authored several Jewish cookbooks, that came later in life — and from an unexpected source.

Marcy never cooked with Gloria, but she managed to recreate the recipe after Gloria had moved on and tweak it a bit, swapping fresh lemons for preserved ones. She made “Gloria’s chicken,” as she called it, with the spicing toned down for her other grandmother when she was aging. Despite a complex relationship, she explains: “It was warmly received and...I knew for a second or two I had my grandmother's unwavering approval.”

It was also one of the dishes she made early in her married days, as she became more observant. And, then later, as a single parent Marcy “kept Friday night with my sons [and] that was our chicken,” she adds. Neither she nor her sons realized it was unusual until they spent Shabbat at the home of friends, where the chicken wasn’t showered with spices. z

Today, her sons are in their 30s but she still makes this chicken along with fresh challah and rosemary potatoes when they come home for Shabbat dinner — well, two chickens. “One for shabbat and one for the weekend,” she adds. “It’s really good sliced cold.”

The recipe may not have been passed down the generations, but, Marcy explains: “It’s a Goldman signature dish at this point.”