Kitty Morse didn’t set out to become an award-winning cookbook author and a celebrated champion of Moroccan cuisine. But when she was a student at UW-Milwaukee, her roommates asked to try some of her traditional Moroccan dishes, and one thing led to another.
Today, Morse has nine cookbooks and two memoirs to her name. She’s had her own television show, founded a company that led gastronomic tours to Morocco, and even cooked alongside Julia Child. Through all her accomplishments, though, Morse has never forgotten how her time at UW-Milwaukee opened new doors and laid the foundation for an exciting career that has spanned the globe.
Morse returns to Milwaukee this week to deliver two talks about her most recent book. On Friday, July 10, she will speak at the Nathan & Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center (registration is required). On Monday, July 13, she will present at the UWM Hefter Conference Center, hosted by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
Ahead of her visit, Morse reflected on her journey from Morocco to Milwaukee and all of the possibilities that opened to her at UWM.
Immigration and possibilities
Morse grew up in Casablanca, the child of a British father and a French mother. Her father had been a British Royal Air Force mechanic during World War II, repairing Spitfire planes damaged in combat. Her maternal grandfather and his family settled in Morocco at the turn of the 20th century.
Morse grew up surrounded by towering minarets, the call to prayer echoing from the mosques, and the delicious scent of couscous.
“Couscous is my favorite, favorite comfort food,” she said. “In Casablanca, there are seven fresh vegetables that go on the topping of couscous. It’s a half-a-day’s preparation, because traditionally in Morocco, couscous is served on Friday, which is a Muslim day of rest, after the men come back from the Mosque. We were surrounded by the aroma of couscous everywhere.”
Kitty Morse on Moroccan cuisine for beginners:
“Tagine is the Moroccan word for a stew, and it’s daily fare in Morocco. We have hundreds of them, because we have meat stews and seafood stews and vegetable stews, and sweet with meat, savory with meat, and they can be regional. I would say to do a tagine, with a meat if you would like to, and then assemble this stew following the recipe.
“The spices we use in Morocco are unique. For the Casablanca area, (there is a spice mix) called chermoula, and it’s a blend of cumin, paprika, garlic, lemon juice, and olive oil. You use that as a marinade, or I just use it on roasted vegetables.”
In 1963 when she was 17, Morse visited her aunt and a set of grandparents who lived in Milwaukee. She immediately fell in love with the towering buildings, the sounds of the city, and the vastness of Lake Michigan that reminded her of the sea. She immigrated soon after and eventually enrolled in UW-Milwaukee with a Spanish major.
She joined the Alpha Phi Sorority. She met and began dating Owen Morse, a dental student at Marquette University who would later become her husband. She started a Master’s degree in French and served as a teaching assistant in both French and Spanish. She traveled around the country.
“It was so interesting, and I had this freedom that you don’t have in a North African country, especially in my era,” Morse said. “The possibility of doing anything I wanted was there, and I grasped at all of them. I learned that at UWM, because nobody put barriers in front of me.”
And while she was at UWM, Morse started to cook.
Building a culinary career
Morse laughs when she remembers her college apartment on Newhall Street. Rent was $25 per month, so “You can imagine the state,” she joked. Her roommates were curious about their friend from Morocco and her food.
“They would ask me, ‘Well, what do you eat in Morocco?’” Morse recalled. “They wanted to me to make whatever it is. I thought, well, why not? So, I would call my great-grandmother, who was still in Casablanca, my great-aunt, other people. I said, how do you make couscous and how do you make tagines?”
Word spread. Soon, Morse was cooking for family friends and bigger crowds to earn pocket money.
Kitty Morse on Moroccan cooking in Milwaukee:
“We would take over people’s living rooms on Prospect or Fox Point, wherever we were, and move all the furniture and bring in the pillows and rugs, because in Morocco you eat seated on poufs out of a communal dish in the center of the table – which we did. Then we invited a belly dancer to dance on the table. Milwaukee had never seen anything like it, we had a great time, and I made money to take us back to Morocco every year to see my father.”
As her popularity grew, Morse began catering, including for the opening of the Milwaukee Public Museum’s building on Wells Street in 1963. Later, when her husband’s career took the couple to California, Morse began writing cookbooks and teaching culinary classes.
“I was very fortunate, because the early ‘80s and the beginning of the ‘90s was a big time for cooking, new cookbooks. America was awakening to new flavors,” she said. “I rode the wave from one Moroccan cookbook to another … gave talks on Moroccan culture everywhere, including at the Smithsonian, and then I started doing my tours. I probably was the first to lead culinary tours to Morocco.”
As she wrote more cookbooks and her prestige grew, Morse was invited to cook alongside Julia Child, who famously brought the Joy of Cooking to her audience. Her books were nominated for, and won, awards, and Morse expanded beyond cookbooks and released her first memoir. But her most ambitious project, and perhaps most personally meaningful, was published in 2023.
Kitty Morse on meeting Julia Child:
“I was invited to cook alongside Julia when she came to Santa Barbara, and it was a benefit for a culinary organization. Julia was the attraction; I was just a sidekick there. But, they asked me to cook a Moroccan meal alongside Julia. Okay, twist my arm! So I went up and I cooked a Moroccan meal with Julia, who was charming.
“Julia was a terrific, wonderful lady. … Just to tell you who she was, she went into the kitchen and she said thank you to my husband for washing the dishes. Oh, my husband was in love with Julia right there!
“And the other funny thing I found out later – in Moroccan cuisine, you use a lot of cilantro. … I made the tagine, the couscous. I found out afterwards she did not like cilantro at all. She never said anything!”
Family history brought to light
After her mother died in 2017, Morse found a small black suitcase on her mother’s shelves. When she opened it, “I was absolutely stunned at what I found: Family documents, photographs, documents from French authorities, and including the personal journal of my great-grandfather, who was a military surgeon in World War II in Alsace-Lorraine, and who worked at Verdun, one of the bloodiest battlefields of the war. … His journal chronicles the advance of the Nazis from April to December 1942 on a daily basis. It was quiet astounding to read.”
Underneath her great-grandfather’s journal was another family treasure.
“I kept digging in the little suitcase … and I found his wife’s recipes in two little notebooks,” Morse said. As she read through them, she realized she knew how to make all the dishes – “Because my mother and my grandmother cooked some of these recipes, but I never knew the provenance of these recipes. It’s just opened up a whole new world.”
Morse knew she had to do something with these pieces of family history she’d uncovered. Another cookbook seemed obvious, but Morse’s husband Owen insisted that she had to include her grandfather’s journal in the book as well. The result was a memoir filled with recipes. The book, Bitter Sweet: A Wartime Journal and Heirloom Recipes from Occupied France, was published in 2023.
This piece of history is especially precious because Morse’s great-grandparents perished in the Holocaust.
“(This book) is my mission. It’s the unfairness. It’s the story of a family who was eliminated, and I’m bringing it back to life,” she said.
Morse will be presenting her latest book at her presentations in Milwaukee on Friday and Monday. Learn more about Morse, her upcoming events, and her books on her personal website.
By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science