How do you make cheese from pantry staples? Or create an oven smoker from scratch in just two minutes? Or make ice cream without a machine? In Home Made, Yvette van Boven shows you how, complete with an irreverent voice, step-by-step photos and illustrations, and a gorgeous photo alongside every recipe. While her recipes are rooted in a natural, from-scratch cooking philosophy, van Boven is never preachy (she doesn’t use the word organic ); she believes that this way of cooking is fun and that the dishes simply taste better. Chapters include Preserving Vegetables, Pre-Dinner Drinks, Chocolate and Cookies, After a Night Out, Ice-Cream-You-Scream, Don’t Forget the Dog!, and more. Each chapter starts with a basic dish that you can make yourself, but usually don’t because you think it’s too complicated (think again!), and includes variations-basic bread becomes focaccia with olives and rosemary, or red cherry and thyme bread. This book will inspire you to make every dish at home.

Praise for Home Made

Winner of the 2012 Treehugger Reader’s Choice Awards for Best Cookbook

You’ll want to eat everything in this book!

-PEOPLE Style Watch

The Year’s 10 Best Cookbooks

-Details, September 2011

This massive, gorgeously photographed, and illustrated tome filled with Dutch/French/Italian-inspired recipes and tutorials is much more than a cookbook; it’s a series of adventures for the culinarily inclined. -Bust magazine

Elegant photography by Oof Verschuren and clever page design make Home Made a delight to read, an invitation to explore, and, ultimately, a guide to appreciating the process as much as the product. -Shelf Awareness

Van Boven co-owns Aan de Amstel cafe in Amsterdam, which serves unpretentious food and warm hospitality. She’s also a writer, food stylist, designer, and illustrator-all talents put to good use in her beautiful new collection of rustic, globally inspired recipes. -Bon Appetit.com

The recipes are incredibly different in a wonderful way.

-Linda Cicero, Miami Herald

The vivid, beautifully composed photos will draw both budding and seasoned cooks to the kitchen. -Detroit Metro Times

[Yvette van Boven] is fearless in the kitchen, taking on everything from cheesemaking to preserving, infusing, and all sorts of other projects that are sure to expand your culinary horizons… . The recipes in Home Made are lovingly hand-lettered and illustrated by van Boven with pen and ink drawings and intricate paper cuttings including some pretty adorable talking lemons and anthropomorphized Swiss chard.

-Serious Eats

Author Yvette van Boven’s practical predinner drink recipes, preserving tips, and dessert menus jump to life with help from bold food photos and snapshots straight out of her kitchen.

• Daily Candy