‘I spin all the plates,” says Kristin Jensen, laughing. “I’m a professional plate spinner.” In the past four years, she has gone from being Ireland’s best-known freelance cookbook editor to setting up Nine Bean Rows, a boutique Irish publishing house with international reach. These are the eye-catching cookbooks that you see popping up in cafés, independent food shops – even mainstream book stores – all around the country.
While some of us spent COVID-19 lockdowns making sourdough and banana bread, queuing to get into supermarkets and walking within our 5km, Kristin was busy dreaming up a new world in Irish publishing from her home in Co Louth. But to explain why Nine Bean Rows – and its imprint Blasta Books – burst fully formed onto the Irish publishing scene in 2021, we need to rewind a little.
Originally from the US, Kristin moved to Ireland with her then-boyfriend-now-husband, Matt in 1999. “It was just supposed to be a fun European adventure for a year, maybe two,” she says. The couple never returned to live in America. Instead, they put down roots in Ireland, buying a house in the countryside outside the market town of Ardee, between Drogheda and Dundalk, and bringing up two children there.
“My neighbours are all farmers and we have cows just across the road,” she says. “We’re in the country – just 10 minutes from town – with all the peace and quiet of the countryside, but we can be in Dublin city centre in an hour and we’re 40 minutes from the airport.”
Back in the States, she had planned to become an English teacher; the move to Ireland put paid to that.
“I had to pivot and change,” she explains. “With an English degree, publishing was the next obvious answer.” Early jobs in that area weren’t promising. Kristin started work on business and law books at a small publishing house in Temple Bar, but it didn’t last. It was an uncertain time in publishing and her first jobs were not a success.
“I had a terrible run of luck – the first three companies I worked for let everyone go, three Christmases in a row. It was a tough start.”
She decided to strike out on her own. “I started doing TEFL [teaching English as a foreign language] in Drogheda and freelancing as an editor, which is how I got into educational publishing.”
Kristin Jensen photographed at The Fumbally Stables Fumbally Lane. \ Philip Doyle
My first cookbook
From there, Kristin had a stroke of luck when she was handed Rachel Allen’s first cookbook to edit. While the path there was not straightforward, Rachel’s Favourite Food marked the beginning of Kristin’s association with Irish food writing, and that has continued ever since.
“It was unintended, but I enjoyed it and ran with it. The more that I edited, the more I was given to edit. The more [cookbooks] that I worked on, the more I got into it,” she says.
The fact that she was becoming more focused on food herself was a big advantage. “I was in my early-to-mid-twenties and had just developed an interest in cooking. Cooking from and reading other cookbooks all fed into making me a better editor. I developed that niche as a freelance editor. It was my USP,” she explains. “I was behind the scenes, editing cookbooks and food magazines, doing recipe development and testing.”
She edited books for, amongst others, Rachel Allen, Darina Allen, Rory O’Connell and Myrtle Allen.
“I was so proud to work on the 50th anniversary edition of the Ballymaloe Cookbook – but also on Catherine Fulvio and almost all Neven Maguire’s cookbooks. Chances are – if it’s an Irish chef – I’ve probably worked on their book,” she says.
Behind every good writer is a great editor, and Kristin became known as the go-to cookbook editor. She had also ventured into writing for herself, co-authoring Sláinte: The Complete Guide to Irish Craft Beer and Cider (full disclosure: I was her co-writer. I can attest to her excellent editorial skills), Saturday Pizzas with Philip Dennhardt and Spice Box: Easy, Everyday Indian Food with Sunil Ghai.
With a 20-year career as a freelance editor under her belt, however, Kristin was starting to get a little bored.
“I had gotten to a point where I was frustrated as a reader, as a consumer and as an editor. I loved the work, but there was an element of ‘is this is it? Is this what I’m going to do for the rest of my life?’”
She also wanted to work on and read a broader, more diverse range of cookbooks.
“I knew how much phenomenal talent we had here and how it just wasn’t being represented in the mainstream media. And I get it, especially now. The economics of publishing are tough. But I felt so strongly that these voices and stories and food deserved a platform.”
In true Little Red Hen style, Kristin set off to do it herself, and she had exactly the skillset that was needed: freelancing had meant that she was used to dealing with a wide variety of clients, and that work on textbooks was valuable training in how to run complex projects. “I couldn’t have started my company if I hadn’t had that experience,” she says. Nothing was wasted.
Kristin Jensen photographed at The Fumbally Stables Fumbally Lane. \ Philip Doyle
“In hindsight, it seems to be obvious,” she admits. “I feel like I was uniquely positioned and uniquely qualified. I could see the gaps and the potential. Others were saying ‘that’s too niche’. I wanted to go all in on that niche. Instead of seeing niche as a bad thing, I decided to flip it on its head and lean into it. It gave me more freedom and flexibility in what I publish.”
Wholesome vibe
Launching Blasta via the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter in early 2021, Kristin quickly had proof of concept. The initial goal was €25,000. That quickly escalated: after just a month, she had raised more than €55,000 from almost 1,000 backers, enabling her to publish her 2022 quartet of books, leading with Tacos by Lily Ramirez-Foran.
The Blasta series has continued every year since, sets of four small, collectable, brightly coloured and beautifully illustrated cookbooks from new authors, spotlighting recipes from Palestine (Jibrin), Malaysia (Acak-Acak), Argentina (Tango) and the Afro-Caribbean (Socafro) alongside whole fish cooking (Whole Catch), deep fried devotion (Hot Fat) and storecupboard tricks (Larder). While the Blasta imprint has been making a splash, Kristin has also published an assortment of other well-received cookbooks as Nine Bean Rows.
“With [Nine Bean Rows], I can do full-size books and anything that doesn’t fit into the Blasta format,” she explains.
Kristin Jensen photographed at The Fumbally Stables Fumbally Lane, The Liberties, Co Dublin, is the founder of the Nine Bean Rows boutique publishing house, which also publishes imprint Blasta Books and food magazine Scoop. \ Philip Doyle
The remit is wide and has included everything from restaurant cookbooks – the elegant Paradiso from Denis Cotter, Jess Murphy’s elegiac Kiwi-in-Galway Kai Cookbook to Ali Dunworth’s fun and knowledgeable A Compendium of Irish Pints, and the joyful Now You’re Cooking, a book by Jolene Cox and her 11-year old daughter Lily Mae, focused on teaching kids to cook. Along with Nine Bean Rows and Blasta Books, there has also been a magazine showcasing long-form food writing, Scoop, as the third pillar of the company.
These are books that reflect a more flavoursome Ireland, a country where you can pick up coconut milk while you pay for petrol, a spice bag at the chipper and fresh lemongrass in the local supermarket.
While spinning plates from her home office in the Louth countryside and dealing with the realities of the business world (“lots of firefighting!”), Kristin has pushed through and managed to publish cookbooks that enable cooks, and readers, to learn about different cultures through food, something that’s now more more important than ever before. In just a few short years, she has created a legacy, a snapshot of what she calls “an exciting time in Irish culture and Irish food.”
“We’re a little island on the edge of Europe, and yet we’re so multicultural and so diverse,” says Kristin. “We’re cooking from a global pantry but our food is also rooted in Irish tradition and Irish ingredients. That can only be a good thing,” says Kristin.
Messy by Aoife McElwain, the latest in the Blasta book series, was launched on 25 October. See blastabooks.com and ninebeanrowsbooks.com.
‘I spin all the plates,” says Kristin Jensen, laughing. “I’m a professional plate spinner.” In the past four years, she has gone from being Ireland’s best-known freelance cookbook editor to setting up Nine Bean Rows, a boutique Irish publishing house with international reach. These are the eye-catching cookbooks that you see popping up in cafés, independent food shops – even mainstream book stores – all around the country.
While some of us spent COVID-19 lockdowns making sourdough and banana bread, queuing to get into supermarkets and walking within our 5km, Kristin was busy dreaming up a new world in Irish publishing from her home in Co Louth. But to explain why Nine Bean Rows – and its imprint Blasta Books – burst fully formed onto the Irish publishing scene in 2021, we need to rewind a little.
Originally from the US, Kristin moved to Ireland with her then-boyfriend-now-husband, Matt in 1999. “It was just supposed to be a fun European adventure for a year, maybe two,” she says. The couple never returned to live in America. Instead, they put down roots in Ireland, buying a house in the countryside outside the market town of Ardee, between Drogheda and Dundalk, and bringing up two children there.
“My neighbours are all farmers and we have cows just across the road,” she says. “We’re in the country – just 10 minutes from town – with all the peace and quiet of the countryside, but we can be in Dublin city centre in an hour and we’re 40 minutes from the airport.”
Back in the States, she had planned to become an English teacher; the move to Ireland put paid to that.
“I had to pivot and change,” she explains. “With an English degree, publishing was the next obvious answer.” Early jobs in that area weren’t promising. Kristin started work on business and law books at a small publishing house in Temple Bar, but it didn’t last. It was an uncertain time in publishing and her first jobs were not a success.
“I had a terrible run of luck – the first three companies I worked for let everyone go, three Christmases in a row. It was a tough start.”
She decided to strike out on her own. “I started doing TEFL [teaching English as a foreign language] in Drogheda and freelancing as an editor, which is how I got into educational publishing.”
Kristin Jensen photographed at The Fumbally Stables Fumbally Lane. \ Philip Doyle
My first cookbook
From there, Kristin had a stroke of luck when she was handed Rachel Allen’s first cookbook to edit. While the path there was not straightforward, Rachel’s Favourite Food marked the beginning of Kristin’s association with Irish food writing, and that has continued ever since.
“It was unintended, but I enjoyed it and ran with it. The more that I edited, the more I was given to edit. The more [cookbooks] that I worked on, the more I got into it,” she says.
The fact that she was becoming more focused on food herself was a big advantage. “I was in my early-to-mid-twenties and had just developed an interest in cooking. Cooking from and reading other cookbooks all fed into making me a better editor. I developed that niche as a freelance editor. It was my USP,” she explains. “I was behind the scenes, editing cookbooks and food magazines, doing recipe development and testing.”
She edited books for, amongst others, Rachel Allen, Darina Allen, Rory O’Connell and Myrtle Allen.
“I was so proud to work on the 50th anniversary edition of the Ballymaloe Cookbook – but also on Catherine Fulvio and almost all Neven Maguire’s cookbooks. Chances are – if it’s an Irish chef – I’ve probably worked on their book,” she says.
Behind every good writer is a great editor, and Kristin became known as the go-to cookbook editor. She had also ventured into writing for herself, co-authoring Sláinte: The Complete Guide to Irish Craft Beer and Cider (full disclosure: I was her co-writer. I can attest to her excellent editorial skills), Saturday Pizzas with Philip Dennhardt and Spice Box: Easy, Everyday Indian Food with Sunil Ghai.
With a 20-year career as a freelance editor under her belt, however, Kristin was starting to get a little bored.
“I had gotten to a point where I was frustrated as a reader, as a consumer and as an editor. I loved the work, but there was an element of ‘is this is it? Is this what I’m going to do for the rest of my life?’”
She also wanted to work on and read a broader, more diverse range of cookbooks.
“I knew how much phenomenal talent we had here and how it just wasn’t being represented in the mainstream media. And I get it, especially now. The economics of publishing are tough. But I felt so strongly that these voices and stories and food deserved a platform.”
In true Little Red Hen style, Kristin set off to do it herself, and she had exactly the skillset that was needed: freelancing had meant that she was used to dealing with a wide variety of clients, and that work on textbooks was valuable training in how to run complex projects. “I couldn’t have started my company if I hadn’t had that experience,” she says. Nothing was wasted.
Kristin Jensen photographed at The Fumbally Stables Fumbally Lane. \ Philip Doyle
“In hindsight, it seems to be obvious,” she admits. “I feel like I was uniquely positioned and uniquely qualified. I could see the gaps and the potential. Others were saying ‘that’s too niche’. I wanted to go all in on that niche. Instead of seeing niche as a bad thing, I decided to flip it on its head and lean into it. It gave me more freedom and flexibility in what I publish.”
Wholesome vibe
Launching Blasta via the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter in early 2021, Kristin quickly had proof of concept. The initial goal was €25,000. That quickly escalated: after just a month, she had raised more than €55,000 from almost 1,000 backers, enabling her to publish her 2022 quartet of books, leading with Tacos by Lily Ramirez-Foran.
The Blasta series has continued every year since, sets of four small, collectable, brightly coloured and beautifully illustrated cookbooks from new authors, spotlighting recipes from Palestine (Jibrin), Malaysia (Acak-Acak), Argentina (Tango) and the Afro-Caribbean (Socafro) alongside whole fish cooking (Whole Catch), deep fried devotion (Hot Fat) and storecupboard tricks (Larder). While the Blasta imprint has been making a splash, Kristin has also published an assortment of other well-received cookbooks as Nine Bean Rows.
“With [Nine Bean Rows], I can do full-size books and anything that doesn’t fit into the Blasta format,” she explains.
Kristin Jensen photographed at The Fumbally Stables Fumbally Lane, The Liberties, Co Dublin, is the founder of the Nine Bean Rows boutique publishing house, which also publishes imprint Blasta Books and food magazine Scoop. \ Philip Doyle
The remit is wide and has included everything from restaurant cookbooks – the elegant Paradiso from Denis Cotter, Jess Murphy’s elegiac Kiwi-in-Galway Kai Cookbook to Ali Dunworth’s fun and knowledgeable A Compendium of Irish Pints, and the joyful Now You’re Cooking, a book by Jolene Cox and her 11-year old daughter Lily Mae, focused on teaching kids to cook. Along with Nine Bean Rows and Blasta Books, there has also been a magazine showcasing long-form food writing, Scoop, as the third pillar of the company.
These are books that reflect a more flavoursome Ireland, a country where you can pick up coconut milk while you pay for petrol, a spice bag at the chipper and fresh lemongrass in the local supermarket.
While spinning plates from her home office in the Louth countryside and dealing with the realities of the business world (“lots of firefighting!”), Kristin has pushed through and managed to publish cookbooks that enable cooks, and readers, to learn about different cultures through food, something that’s now more more important than ever before. In just a few short years, she has created a legacy, a snapshot of what she calls “an exciting time in Irish culture and Irish food.”
“We’re a little island on the edge of Europe, and yet we’re so multicultural and so diverse,” says Kristin. “We’re cooking from a global pantry but our food is also rooted in Irish tradition and Irish ingredients. That can only be a good thing,” says Kristin.
Messy by Aoife McElwain, the latest in the Blasta book series, was launched on 25 October. See blastabooks.com and ninebeanrowsbooks.com.
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