Year after year, good and not so good cookbooks keep coming out. Recently, two new titles made us wonder whether there is something gender-specific about cooking and cookbooks. Could a cookbook in 2012 possibly have something to say to women and not to men? Or vice versa?

That seems to be the idea with "Eat Like a Man" compiled by Esquire magazine (Chronicle Books, $30, 225 pages,) and "The Bonne Femme Cookbook" by Wini Moranville (Harvard Common Press, $24.95, 418 pages).

Would we actually be cooking and eating – and possibly belching and scratching – while following along with "Eat Like a Man: The Only Cookbook a Man Will Ever Need?" And would we get in touch with our feminine and French side while cooking away with Moranville's "Bonne Femme," the French term for "good wife," with the appealing subtitle "Simple, Splendid Food That French Women Cook Every Day."

After poring over both of these books, I realize I can, indeed, have it all, baby. I can eat like a man and cook like a "bonne femme."

Despite the titles, which seem to be a marketing ploy to appeal to gift buyers, both books have plenty to offer – and each takes an approach worth your while.

The Esquire book, like much of what the magazine attempts to do, works a gender-specific angle until many of us roll our eyes. This much-respected publication has given us numerous thoughtful articles, but it's also given us silliness masquerading as sexiness – the never-ending "world's sexiest woman" pieces, for instance, or fashion articles that showcase $950 sweaters and $800 shoes.

'Bonne Femme'

"The Bonne Femme Cookbook" is anchored in an awkward kind of sexism, too. The many excellent recipes focus on the wonderful – and casual – food French housewives are known to cook.

Moranville has translated and updated scores of recipes to make them approachable to American women and, we hope, men.

The author writes, "Most French women don't spend all day at the market or in their kitchens, any more than most of us do. Many of them work outside the home, juggling their family and professions and the overall speeding-up of life, just like us. And yet they still manage to bring fresh, life-enhancing food to the table night after night."

If you can get past the notion that a French woman has to work and clean and cook (and clean up some more) and maybe raise a couple of kids, too, then this book is a little gem. The author, who has traveled often to France, provides plenty of insight and instruction. The recipes focus on dishes you can make after you get home from work.

It's true, especially if you are one organized and meticulous bonne femme (or bonhomme).

Page after page, Moranville introduces French cooking and takes a friendly and encouraging tone. She emphasizes good ingredients, but she isn't preachy about it. If you don't want to make the caramel sauce to go along with the "crème caramel chez vous" recipe, she tells you it's OK to use pre-made stuff from the grocery store.

We delved into "La Bonne Femme" with élan, beginning with one of the great French bistro dishes, beef Burgundy, or boeuf bourguignon. Moranville gives a great tip on buying the meat – try beef short ribs.

We got ours from the excellent meat counter at Taylor's Market, then walked about 30 feet to the nice little wine section, where the wine buyer, Richard Ebert, will remind you that the best wine for beef Burgundy is a Burgundy, which is, of course, the home of pinot noir.

This is not a highly technical dish, but it does take careful preparation and some patience. The meat will braise in two cups of that red wine for two hours or more. By then, your kitchen will smell so good you'll want to open the windows just to torment your neighbors. You then reduce and thicken the sauce, adding a simple but useful butter-and-flour mixture called "beery mania."

Add some sautéed mushrooms and pearl onions, adjust the seasonings and you're eating like the French. Bonus points if you can ride to the store on a rickety bike to buy a crusty baguette.

We did two chicken dishes that were quicker and easier – chicken tarragon and chicken francese. Moranville tells us that the latter dish is likely not French at all – it was probably cooked up in the new world by Italian Americans. No matter, it's still good eating. You pound the chicken flat (I put the boneless breasts in a large Ziploc bag and then hit them with the mallet; it's cleaner and quicker). Then the sauce is ready in minute – minced shallots, cloves of garlic pushed through a press, deglaze with white wine (we used 3/4 of a cup from a $9 bottle of Vouvray) and fresh lemon juice, and it's ready to eat within minutes.

For the chicken tarragon, Moranville urges the reader: "Still skeptical about whether such simple recipes with so few ingredients can really bring inspired results to the table? Please – try this recipe."

We did. She was right.

The author is a wise and friendly tour guide, whether you set out to tackle a steak done the French way or an elegant little dessert like the eminently doable and delicious crème caramel.

It's fun to be so French and so "bonne femme" without going to too much trouble, even if I wear size 12 shoes and will never be mistaken for Catherine Deneuve.

'Eat Like a Man'

Surely, "Eat Like a Man" would be a more natural fit. This is the kind of book that has enough useful and entertaining information that you'll want to look past the oddly unappetizing (but macho?) photographs and the overall sense that the target audience is a know-nothing bonehead who is one cookbook away from becoming a sophisticated gentleman – an Esquire kind of guy.

If that is the case, if you're planning a graduation gift for a son or grandson or loved one of the male persuasion, do him a favor and get him "Joy of Cooking." He'll own it forever, will rely on it often and the recipes and insights will help him become an excellent home cook.

But "Eat Like a Man" has its appeal whether you're a man or woman. Many women would be more than eager to tackle the recipes, most offered by well-known chefs. It's also fun to read, if you skip over the two self-satisfied Tom Junod pieces (one on eating hearts and brains, the other about cooking $130-a-pound Wagyu beef) and don't linger on the Mario Batali interview, in which he talks about his penchant for overeating (hadn't noticed).

But the recipes are good and sometimes great. They are also ranked by ease of use – "easy," "reasonable" and "worth" the effort – which is helpful when you're getting ready to cook and have certain constraints.

So many of the recipes in "Eat Like a Man" look either really good or really weird – oatmeal with jalapeño and ancho chiles (weird), croque monsieur (good), the meat loaf with ground beef and hot Italian sausage (really, really good).

Meat loaf is a great dish with a bad rap. It's either too bland, too dry or too skimpy to start with. If you're going to do a simple dish, do it the right way – with great ingredients.

I sautéed the onions in butter, added some minced garlic, mixed it with the meat, cilantro, eggs, panko (Japanese style bread crumbs) and salt and pepper. This takes 10 minutes, tops. You shape it into an oiled loaf pan and put it in the oven for 40 fuss-free minutes. The results were incredible – the aroma, the juiciness, the spicy but balanced kick. What a great dish to have with a cold beer or a glass of, say, Riesling.

Sadly, this ambitious book has only one recipe for dessert, which is aptly called "the only dessert you'll ever need." It's a fruit crisp. That would be like Esquire opining about "the only pair of underwear you'll ever need," which could be the focus of an upcoming Tom Junod essay.

Despite the titles and marketing angles here, both books have plenty in store for everyone, male or female, full-on foodie or aspiring cook.

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