By Nanette Wiser
My friend, cookbook author and world traveler Kitty Morse’s new memoir will make you weep with joy. BITTER SWEET: A Wartime Journal and Heirloom Recipes from Occupied France is an homage both to her late husband Owen (who passed in January 2023 and helped photograph, research and edit this book) and her Alsation ancestors who perished in WWII.
Kitty Morse was born in Casablanca, Morocco, of a French mother and British father, and emigrated to the United States in 1964. She began catering Moroccan parties while studying for her master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The author of 11 cookbooks, my favorite till now has been The Scent of Orange Blossoms: Sephardic Cuisine from Morocco. kittymorse.com
Says Morse: “Bitter Sweet is based upon the war journal of my French great-grandfather, Dr. Prosper Levy, chronicling the advance of the Germans in Alsace-Lorraine in 1940. I discovered both his journal and my great-grandmother Blanche Lévy-Neymarck’s recipes in a little black suitcase my mother kept in a closet for decades without showing me the contents. Blanche died at Auschwitz along with her daughter and son-in-law a few weeks before the Liberation.”
KALOUGAT (Chocolate Pudding Cake)
Ingredients: 9 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces; 7 ounces dark chocolate, broken into pieces; 4 eggs, at room temperature; 1 cup powdered sugar, sifted; ¼ cup almond meal; 2 teaspoons white vinegar. Top with crème anglaise.
Instructions: Preparing this the day before helps the cake acquire its dense, pudding like consistency. Preheat oven to 325º F. Butter a non-stick 9-inch pie pan with 1 tablespoon of the butter and line the base with a round of lightly buttered parchment paper. Set aside. Bring water to a boil in a double boiler. Remove from heat and add the chocolate and the butter to the upper container. Stir the mixture until smooth and set aside.
Separate the eggs. In a large bowl, beat the yolks with ¾ cup of the powdered sugar until the mixture forms thick ribbons. In increments, fold in the almond meal and then blend in the chocolate/butter mixture.
In another large bowl, beat the egg whites and vinegar until soft peaks form. Add the remaining ¼ cup powdered sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form. Fold the egg whites into the almond meal/chocolate mixture. Pour the finished batter into the greased pie tin and set it inside a roasting pan. Create a bain-marie (water bath) by carefully adding boiling water to the roasting pan until the water reaches halfway up the sides of the pie tin. Bake until the cake is set, 45-50 minutes.
Unmold the warm cake, remove the parchment paper, and transfer to a rack to cool overnight. Cut into wedges and serve on individual dessert plates in pools of warm crème anglaise.