The old, tattered leather suitcase was a gift that cookbook writer Kitty Morse wasn’t expecting. Morse came across it in 2017, just after her mother died at 94. The Vista author discovered it on the top shelf of a closet in her mother’s home, behind a crocheted comforter, she recalled in the introduction to her powerful new book, “Bitter Sweet: A Wartime Journal and Heirloom Recipes From Occupied France.”
Morse had only briefly glanced inside the suitcase but wasn’t ready to find out more, so it moved onto the top shelf of her own bedroom closet. It was three years after her mother’s death that she finally opened up what she has been calling “la petite valise.” That was after Morse happened upon a C-SPAN broadcast in January 2020 of a memorial ceremony at the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi Germany-occupied Poland.
“It was a commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz,” she recalled. “I saw they were in front of the crematoriums. And honestly, I knew the story, but it didn’t relate to me personally. I mean, I knew that my great-grandparents had disappeared, but we never ever spoke about it. I never asked questions of my mother and my grandmother; they would not have answered. It was too painful. Anyway, this man, (historian and Auschwitz survivor) Marian Turski, is standing in front of the crematoriums, and he said we need a new 11th commandment. He said, ‘Don’t be complacent. We cannot remain indifferent. Never be a bystander.’
“I was spellbound. And I discovered I can’t remain indifferent. This is about who I am. I saw that maybe it’s time I opened the suitcase.”
This time, she took a deep dive. Inside, she found a collection of documents and photographs that any family member who lost loved ones to the Holocaust would be stunned to encounter.
Kitty Morse holds a small medical notebook that her great-grandfather Prosper Lévy, a doctor, used as a journal. He wrote about how his family’s life changed as World War II began.
(Adriana Heldiz / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Among them was her great-grandfather Prosper Lévy’s pocket medical notebook that he used as a journal (he was a doctor who had served France in World War I as a military surgeon). It was overflowing with details of the deterioration of his family’s life as what would become Germany’s invasion and World War II began. Morse also discovered a 1982 typed transcription of Prosper’s cribbed French scrawl by her mother, Nicole, who was Prosper’s granddaughter.
Another notebook contains recipes from Kitty Morse’s great-grandmother Blanche Neymarck. Morse recognized many of them as dishes her mother and grandmother had prepared for her in her childhood.
(Adriana Heldiz / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Then Morse found a similar notebook filled with family recipes that his wife, Morse’s great-grandmother Blanche Neymarck, had compiled. Blanche’s recipe book was an immediate treasure for the cookbook author, but it became an emotional undertaking to translate the recipes and convert measurements. The collection took Morse back to her own childhood, first in Morocco and then in Wisconsin. Many of those recipes were dishes her mother and grandmother, Suzanne, had prepared for her. She hadn’t known their origin.
Morse also found an official document in la petite valise with a list of names of French Jews who were deported to Auschwitz, a list that her mother had requested from the Red Cross. To her horror, the names included Blanche and several other family members.
For Morse, everything just clicked, and she started putting her thoughts down on paper, before realizing she had to turn her family history into a book.
“What happened was so powerful and it was so unfair. I had to tell their story.”
“Bitter Sweet: A Wartime Journal & Heirloom Recipes From Occupied France” is Kitty Morse’s 11th cookbook (2023, La Caravane Publishing, $35, on Amazon.com or at kittymorse.com).
(La Caravane Publishing)
The first part of “Bitter Sweet” interweaves the family’s complicated fin de siècle history in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France (now known as Le Grand Est) and in Morocco — where her grandparents lived and Morse was born — with a bit of historical context of the times, followed by Morse’s English translation of Prosper’s journal. It ends on New Year’s Eve of 1940, when a very ill Prosper was 78 years old. He died in a hospital three years later. While brief, at just 38 pages and a 23-page introduction, it’s a powerful, intimate story that leaves the reader feeling that they, too, have a connection to this family.
Morse then turns to Blanche’s recipes.
What she discovered was that the collection was vastly weighted with dessert recipes. Of 166 recipes, Morse tallied 16 that were for chocolate cakes alone, while another 44 were for other cakes. There are 33 cookie recipes, two for crepes, and 31 for other desserts. Savory dishes made up only six recipes, which Morse found surprising, given that Blanche’s father supplied meat and poultry to Napoleon III’s armies. She can only guess that perhaps there may have been another recipe book that had been left behind. Morse decided to add a number of recipes for savory dishes that would have been familiar to her grandmother and mother in the Lévy-Neymarck household. “Bitter Sweet’s” recipes are beautifully photographed by Morse’s late husband Owen, who died in January.
As you can imagine, given the geography of the source — Northeastern France, bordering on Germany — the dishes are sophisticated yet hearty. Among Morse’s savory recipes are a Lamb and Turnip Stew, Pork and Veal Pie, Alsatian Sauerkraut, and Civet de Lapin au Riesling, or Rabbit Stew with Riesling Wine. The rabbit stew was important for her to include because at one point her great-grandparents were hidden in a little limestone tunnel, where wines were stored, by two French ladies. Rabbits were plentiful, and they cooked this rabbit stew and shared it with Prosper and Blanche.
Here, Morse offers a different version of the stew, Poulet au Riesling, or Chicken in Riesling Wine.
This is a homey comfort dish in which chicken pieces are dusted with flour and then browned in butter before being transferred to a Dutch oven. Garlic, shallots, carrots, a bay leaf and chanterelle mushrooms join the chicken, and the mixture is baked in riesling wine until tender. At that point, the chicken is removed to a serving dish, then more wine, along with chicken broth, is added to the Dutch oven and heated on the stove until the sauce is reduced by a third. Finally, the heat is reduced, and crème fraiche is stirred in, before being poured over the chicken. Morse serves this with her spaetzle dumplings, a recipe also in the book.
Poulet au Riesling (Chicken in Riesling Wine)
(Adriana Heldiz / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Whether you eat it with spaetzle or even rice, the chicken slips off the bone, each bite rich in the garlic and shallots and perfumed by the riesling. Punctuate the chicken bites with the sweet slices of carrots and the earthy mushrooms. When Morse prepared the dish in her kitchen, she substituted the chanterelles with dried morels, which she had plumped in warm water.
Morse selected two dessert recipes to share that were childhood favorites: Saucisson au Chocolat, or Chocolate Sausage, and Gâteau de Carottes, or Carrot Cake.
“I grew up with the saucisson,” she recalled with a smile. “My mother used to make it for birthdays and wrap it in silver paper. It looks like a chocolate sausage, with the almonds and the chocolate. It was a tradition.”
Saucisson au Chocolat (Chocolate Sausage)
(Adriana Heldiz / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Her decadent chocolate sausage is easy to make. It has all of five ingredients: dark chocolate, honey, unsalted butter, chopped almonds and dark cocoa powder. You melt the dark chocolate over a double boiler with the honey and butter, stirring until smooth. Then add the almonds.
The fun part comes next. Spread the mixture over a baking sheet lined with foil. Let it cool, then roll it into the shape of a thick sausage and refrigerate it. To serve, remove it from the foil, dust it with the cocoa powder and slice.
Finally, there’s her carrot cake. It’s a direct translation from Blanche’s recipe — and it’s nothing like the U.S. version. It’s a single layer. There’s no cream cheese frosting or raisins. It’s not even very sweet. And, there’s no wheat flour. Instead, it’s made with almond flour and almond meal — and Morse is careful to note in the recipe the difference between them. As she explained, almond meal comes from whole almonds with skin, while almond flour is made from skinless blanched almonds.
Gâteau de Carottes (Carrot Cake)
(Adriana Heldiz / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
The cake gets a lot of its flavor and sweetness from the orange juice and Cointreau in the recipe that complement the grated carrots. Once baked, it’s served with a dollop of whipped cream, made with powdered sugar and vanilla. Morse garnishes the whipped cream with zest from the juiced oranges. It’s a moist, dense cake with a hint of sweetness that would be perfect served with tea. But as Blanche has directed, make it the day before serving. That will help bring out the flavors.
“It’s very popular in France,” said Morse. “People love it because it’s not sweet, and in France, you don’t believe in icing.”
While Morse dedicated years to unraveling her family’s history, there’s a mystery that was never solved — how did her family come into possession of la petite valise? All Morse knows is that in 1946, it was delivered anonymously, wrapped in butcher paper and tied with string, to the front doorstep of the Casablanca home of her grandparents, Armand and Suzanne. Armand found it, opened it, and only after weeks or months felt he could show it to Suzanne, who couldn’t cope with its existence. Eventually Armand gave it to Nicole, who never spoke of it to her daughter, although she did transcribe her father’s journal, copied Blanche’s recipes onto index cards, and made the Red Cross request. And with Nicole’s passing, that history in a suitcase became Morse’s. She guesses the sender was probably one of the couple’s French neighbors during the war who sent it to Morocco. And she’s grateful for the bittersweet gift.
“My mission is to tell the story,” she said. “It’s just propelled me. It’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life, but you can’t remain indifferent.”
This hearty and homey dish known as Poulet au Riesling features chicken pieces browned and then cooked in a Dutch oven with veggies and riesling wine. The fall-off-the-bone meat is served with a rich crème fraîche sauce.
(Adriana Heldiz / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Poulet au Riesling (Chicken in Riesling Wine)
Makes 4 servings
4 chicken legs
4 chicken thighs
½ cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 shallots, very finely diced
2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced thinly on the diagonal
1 half-ounce package of dried chanterelle mushrooms, plumped in warm water, and drained (optional)
1 bay leaf
1½ cups dry riesling wine, divided use
½ cup chicken broth
1 cup crème fraîche
Parsley, finely chopped, for garnish
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Pat dry the chicken pieces. Set aside.
Place the flour, salt and pepper in a paper bag. Add the chicken pieces and shake to coat. Set aside.
In a heavy pan or skillet, melt the butter and the oil over medium heat. Brown the chicken on all sides, turning the pieces over with tongs, for 5 to 6 minutes. Transfer them to a Dutch oven or heavy baking dish that can go from oven to table. Add the garlic, shallots, carrots, mushrooms (if using), bay leaf, and 1 cup of the riesling wine. Transfer to the oven and bake until the chicken is tender, 50 to 55 minutes. Discard the bay leaf. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the chicken and vegetables to a serving dish and keep warm. Let the sauce simmer in the pan.
To the sauce, add the remaining riesling wine and the chicken broth. Increase the heat to medium-high and reduce the sauce by a third.
Lower the heat and, in increments, add the crème fraîche to the simmering sauce. Do not boil. Pour the sauce over the chicken and vegetables. Garnish with the carrots and parsley and serve.
Chocolate Sausage was a birthday treat that came wrapped in special silver paper when Kitty Morse was young. The dark chocolate log with almonds is chilled, dusted with cocoa powder and sliced to serve.
(Adriana Heldiz / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Saucisson au Chocolat (Chocolate Sausage)
Makes 6 servings
10 ounces dark chocolate, broken into pieces
3½ ounces honey
1½ ounces butter
7 ounces chopped almonds
Dark cocoa powder, for dusting
Bring water to a boil in the lower container of a double boiler. Remove from the heat and, to the upper container, add the chocolate, honey and butter. Stir until smooth. Fold in the chopped almonds.
Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Spread the chocolate/almond mixture onto the foil. When cool to the touch, roll into the shape of a salami and refrigerate until it hardens completely.
To serve, dust with cocoa powder and cut the saucisson into slices. Store in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.
This carrot cake is different than those made in the U.S. as it contains no wheat flour or cream cheese frosting. The hint of sweetness comes from orange juice and Cointreau that go well with the grated carrots.
(Adriana Heldiz / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Gâteau de Carottes (Carrot Cake)
Makes 8 servings (or about 12 cupcakes)
4 eggs, separated, divided use
¾ cup granulated sugar
4 ounces unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ cup fresh orange juice, strained
2 tablespoons Cointreau orange liqueur
2 cups coarsely grated carrots
1⅓ cups almond flour (see Note)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup almond meal (see Note)
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
4 tablespoons powdered sugar, divided use
1 cup heavy cream
½ teaspoon vanilla
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Line the bottom of a 9-inch pie pan with a round of greased parchment paper. Grease the sides.
In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks, granulated sugar and butter until the mixture forms ribbons. Into this mixture, stir in the orange juice, Cointreau and grated carrots. Reserve the egg whites. Set aside.
In another medium bowl, combine the almond flour, baking powder and almond meal. In increments, fold this into the egg yolk/grated-carrot mixture and set the batter aside.
Beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar and 3 tablespoons of the powdered sugar until stiff peaks form. Fold into the batter. Transfer to the pie pan, and bake on the middle rack of the oven until firm to the touch, 50 to 55 minutes.
In a chilled bowl, whip the heavy cream with the remaining powdered sugar and the vanilla until stiff peaks form. Serve the Gâteau de Carottes with whipped cream on the side.
Note: The terms almond flour and almond meal are often used interchangeably, though they are not the same. Almond meal comes from whole almonds (with skins). It is not as fine as almond flour made from skinless blanched almonds.
Golden is a San Diego freelance food writer and blogger.