Blasta cookbook publisher Kristin Jensen: ‘Food and stories are what we all have in common’

For some, the restrictions on movement imposed during the Covid pandemic provided time to reflect on the direction their lives had taken and the space to consider new projects. American-born, Louth-based freelance editor and writer Kristin Jensen was one of those lucky individuals.

“We were walking around in circles in our neighbourhoods, which gave me time to think,” says Jensen, explaining how this extra headspace led her to books, specifically food books. She found herself adding a spot of colour and a hefty pinch of creativity to the mix and, before long, had become publisher of the vibrant and funky Blasta cookery book series. Later, a second imprint followed: Nine Bean Rows, focusing on wider food culture in Ireland.

Jensen had moved to Ireland in 1999 with plans to stay a year or so after meeting Irish architect Matt MacDonagh-Dumler in the final year of her English literature degree at the University of Wisconsin.

“I’d never left the country before so I had to get a passport. I moved two weeks after graduation because Matt was here, and I’ve never left,” she says with a smile. The couple married in 2002, settled first in Drogheda and later moved to the countryside outside Ardee, Co Louth, with their two children, Maeve and Connor.

Initially, Jensen got work editing business and law books and then moved into educational publishing. Rachel Allen’s debut cookbook, Rachel’s Favourite Food published by Gill & Macmillan in 2004 was the first cookbook she worked on.

A decade later, while still juggling work as a freelance editor with parenting responsibilities, Jensen wrote Sláinte: The complete guide to Irish craft beer and cider (New Island Books, 2014) with journalist and food writer, Caroline Hennessy.

A few years earlier, Hennessy and Jensen had started the Irish Food Bloggers Association to promote food blogging and small Irish producers. Jensen was writing her Edible Ireland blog at the time, which later led her to become a member of the Irish Food Writers’ Guild. And it was a connection with Mexican food blogger Lily Ramirez-Foran that inspired her to become a publisher.

“Lily’s experience became the kernel of the whole idea to start my own company,” says Jensen. By 2020, Ramirez-Foran had been running Mexican cooking classes and supper clubs in Picado, her Mexican grocery shop in South Richmond Sreet in Dublin’s Portobello, for about six years, while doing cooking demonstrations on daytime television.

“Lily was doing everything right yet her proposal for a cookery book was rejected 10 times. She was told Mexican food was too niche. Nobody would buy it and that she needed 100,000 followers on social media channels for it to work,” says Jensen.

“I was in the food world – a cookbook buyer (she admits to having hundreds of cookbooks) and a food lover and I was frustrated by many people like Lily who I knew had tremendous talent and incredible stories and yet weren’t getting publishing deals.”

Jensen says that in the early 2020s, publishing was a closed shop to many. “It was the same few people getting publishing deals because it’s a small market and cookbooks are expensive to publish.”

[ Kristin Jensen of Blasta Books: ‘I always said that if I ever won the Lotto, I’d start my own publishing house’Opens in new window ]

She began to ask herself why cookbooks had to have 100 recipes with 100 photos and a costly two-week photo shoot. “This standard cookbook brief means that only a few chefs with a restaurant or a TV show can sell enough books to make money,” she says.

And so, propelled by the unusual circumstances of a pandemic – and a wider sense of injustice fuelled by events in the US – Jensen got to work. “Being from the United States, I was following a lot of conversations filtering down into food media about whose voices and stories and food are being shared? Who is not at the table? Why is it okay for a food magazine to have a white male chef make tacos and not a Mexican chef who knows much more about them?”

Inspired by other small-format cookery books (Little Leon in the UK and Short Stack Cookbooks in the US), she created Blasta Books with recipes as the vehicles for stories and approached Ramirez-Foran as her first author.

“I was terrified. I did nothing for six months but then Lily said yes to a book on tacos and I launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding site to set it up,” says Jensen.

Within two days, she had met her first target of €25,000 to fund two books and within a month, she had a seed fund of €55,000 to publish her first four books.

Tacos by Lily Ramirez-Foran (which went on sell 10,000 copies around the world and remains one of Blasta Books bestsellers) was the first to come out, in February 2022.

Next came Hot Fat by Russell Alford and Patrick Hanlon, aka The GastroGays food and travel writers from Drogheda, on deep fat frying.

Then, chef Jess Murphy of Kai in Galway teamed up with Bread 41’s Eoin Cluskey to write The United Nations of Cookies with biscuit recipes from Norway to Palestine to Malaysia and Japan. Wok by Kwanghi Chan, TV chef and former restaurateur, made up the foursome. Wok, the first Irish Chinese cookbook, went on to win the 28th Gourmand World Cookbook Awards the Chinese cookbook category in 2023.

And with new books coming out every quarter, Blasta Books quickly got noticed by world-famous chefs and food writers, prompting Jensen to get a UK and worldwide distributor in 2023.

“Nigella Lawson gave Tacos a shout-out on her weekly cookbook corner. As did [UK-based] journalist India Knight. Jamie Oliver and restaurant critic, Jay Rayner are fans. And H&M put in a one-off order for Tacos and Tapas [by Anna Cabrera and Vanessa Murphy],” says Jensen. She reckons the books’ pink covers made them work for one of the chain’s in-store display campaigns.

‘The first couple of years were very tough as with publishing so much revenue comes from back titles and I didn’t have any’

Describing Blasta Books as a “brand-forward series” – the word “blasta” means tasty or flavoursome in Irish – Jensen says that the strong visual identity of the books makes them collectable.

The first 16 Blasta books were illustrated by Nicky Hooper and Ciara Coogan and later ones photographed by Jo Murphy. “They do best in non-bookshops like homeware and kitchen shops or cafes and delis. I get Instagram photos of people finding the books on holidays all over Europe.”

Meanwhile the Nine Bean Rows imprint (the name of course comes from WB Yeats’s Lake Isle of Innisfree poem) offers insight into Ireland’s wider food culture.Books include An Irish Food Story by Galway-based chef JP McMahon and The Kai Cookbook – a love letter to the west of Ireland by the aforementioned Murphy.

“The idea with Nine Bean Rows was that once I had an author published with Blasta Books, why would I hand them over to a publisher who wouldn’t publish them in the first place,” says Jensen.

However, her idea to build a pathway for authors of the once-off Blasta Books has merged into publishing books within a wider foodie brief. The most recent book, Blood, Guts & Black Pudding – Ireland’s Dying Art of Blood as Food by Kate Ryan, food writer and founder of flavour.ie, is a case in point.

Together with food journalist Dee Laffan, Jensen also began publishing Scoop magazine to give a platform to long-form food journalism. “We published two issues but there hasn’t really been a big market for it here. It’s dormant at the moment, but we are still considering publishing it again alongside multimedia and festival events,” she says.

Now with 20 books in the Blasta series and 19 in Nine Bean Rows, Jensen has become an established figure in publishing in Ireland. “I still consider myself a micro-publisher. I can’t compete with the big publishers on advances but I give my authors a boutique experience. It’s a more collaborative approach,” says Jensen.

She describes her first five years in business as a “steep learning curve”.

“The first couple of years were very tough as with publishing so much revenue comes from back titles and I didn’t have any. Now, five years later, it is getting easier and I can see a sustainable way forwards to grow the brand and have a bigger footprint,” she says. In practical terms, this means Jensen is now able to pay herself a salary.

She admits to finding it frustrating that she wasn’t able to tap into any grants or start-up business funding. “There was nothing from the Arts Council because the books aren’t fiction even though I’m hiring designers, artists and photographers. There was nothing from Enterprise Ireland because I’m not manufacturing anything – and the irony is that my Irish books are being shipped all over the world,” she says.

Interestingly, the Irish Design Shop on Drury Street in Dublin 2 – a popular store for tourists looking for traditional and modern Irish crafts, gifts and homewares – is one of the biggest sellers of her books.

In spite of all the hard graft, Jensen still emanates excitement over her Covid idea becoming a reality.

She is also passionate about how food is a powerful connector. “Food and stories are what we all have in common. Everyone sits around a table to eat. The strength of these authors’ voices is a thread that connects us all. We have access to a global larder in Ireland now that was unimaginable here even 10 years ago. It’s important to remember that food is what unites us rather than divides us in a very polarised world.”