Some cookbooks matter because of the stories they tell. What they contain between their pages is connection. Maybe it’s even a love story, translated into grains of rice, egg rolls, stalks of lemongrass.
The recipes? They’re simply the bonus round.
December 5, 1964
A woman named Thi Khen Tran leaves her children and her home in Vietnam to work as a nanny as in the States. By day, she takes care of the six children of American diplomats in North Carolina. By night, she works at Vietnamese restaurant. When and if, she’s paid by the diplomats, her salary is $10.00 a month. At the restaurant, she makes $4.00 a night. It is there she meets a handsome, debonair man, also from Viet Nam named Giap Ngo Van. A Parisian trained chef, Giap helps other Vietnamese immigrants negotiate the turbulent and oft confusing ways of the new world in which they live. Khen (pronounced Ken) thinks that Giap is a nice man, a man she can trust. Knowing Khen is unhappy working for the un-paying diplomats Giap encourages her to move to New York City with him to nanny for a good family — the Taylors, who’ve hired Giap as their private chef. Khen moves to the city to care for Laurie and baby Lindsey Taylor.
Giap and Khen spend summers in Vineyard Haven with the Taylor children, cohogging and fishing at Owen Park. Things are good, they are happy and she is secure enough to send money home to her own family, in Vietnam, hoping one day to be reunited with them.
When Giap retires, The Taylors hire a new cook. But the then-four-year old Lindsey won’t eat the new-bad cook’s food. He only eats with Khen and only eats her sweet rice and rainbow cake. The new-bad cook is fired. Khen becomes the cook for the family. “That’s why I had to learn to cook, for Laurie and Lindsey.” Khen writes in her memoir-cookbook, The Egg Roll Lady of Martha’s Vineyard. “I made egg rolls and they loved it.”
When Khen started selling at the Farmer’s Market in West Tisbury, she sold flowers and lettuce. But everyone sold lettuce – so she decided to sell something different – smoked bluefish mousse. She’d learned how to make mousse from Giap, the bluefish was Khen’s Vineyard inspiration. Since the kids liked her egg rolls so much, she decides to try selling them too. That was the summer of ’87. In that first year, priced at $1.75, they didn’t sell well. The next season, Khen writes in her book “if no one buys them for $1.75, I’ll sell them for $2.00.” When she did that everyone said ‘ “we love your egg rolls”’ and she sold out.
Khen writes that in the beginning, she’d cook the entire day before, only resting between midnight and 2:00am when she awoke to keep rolling for Saturday’s Market. There have been many hands helping Khen through the years but Lindsey was the inspiration from the beginning and he’s grown up side by side with Khen, rolling egg rolls.
After living in the States for forty-two years...Today on the Vineyard, Khen is so pleased to see her customers return year after year, standing in line in front her stand, waiting for the 9am Farmer’s Market bell to ring. Now she’s feeding the children and the grandchildren of some of her most admiring fans.
When you look at Khen’s table at the Farmer’s Market — you see her life in food.
The eggrolls that fed Lindsey since he was a child. The cold rolls – which in the beginning were wrapped in rice paper that Mr. Taylor brought back from Paris. The blueberry tarts and meringues that Khen learned to make by watching Giap cook for the family. Giap’s cookie recipe that Khen adopted, heavy in the yolks leftover from the meringue – the M&M’s were Khen’s own granddaughter’s idea. It’s Laurie’s kahula-rich dense brownie recipe that you bite into. Daisy Taylor Lifton – the older sister to Laurie and Lindsey, and forever-loyal friend to Khen – suggested the sesame noodles, and it was Daisy whos was the impetus for Khen’s memoir/cookbook, self-published this year.
In 1991, Madame Taylor and Giap passed away. They are buried on the island. Once a year she burns incense for them.
In 1995, Khen built her own home in West Tisbury, where she has her commercial kitchen, her thriving flower, vegetable and herb gardens. By 1998, Khen’s own two children were able to move to the US from Vietnam, settling in Martha’s Vineyard and Florida. Khen’s island-based grandchildren have graduated from the MV Regional High School — Tanya is engaged and Ahn is off to college. Lindsey Taylor, his wife and their son Lucas, live on Khen’s property. Lucas, this youngest of Khen's American family loves her Vietnamese omelet, asking for it whenever he sees his ‘grandmother’. Lindsey, to this day still rolls egg rolls, side by side with his Khen.
Khen’s cookbook, The Egg Roll Lady of Martha’s Vineyard, is for sale at her stand at the West Tisbury Farmer’s Market, Cronig's down-island store, Alley's General Store and Bunch of Grapes in Vineyard Haven.
