The premise of "Gentlemen, Start Your Ovens" is that a lot of men don't know how to cook.

True enough. But a lot of women don't know how to cook either. (My wife's cooking is fit for a king. Here, King! Here, King!)

That said, there's certainly a place in the kitchen for a cookbook that's written for men about man food.

And there's plenty of man food here in simple recipes using easy-to-find ingredients. Chili. Meat loaf. Pasta.

The first chapter pretty much assumes you've never seen a kitchen before and that you have no common sense. Among the things suggested: "Each time you cook, you should give your knife a few strokes along the finest side of your sharpening blade." A what?

It's also hard to get past the bad illustrations. The crude drawings throughout the book combine hand tools and car parts with kitchen utensils and things we couldn't identify.

And that's a shame, because if you can get past the dumb artwork, the recipes are pretty good. They're simple, using basic ingredients. They would surely be unintimidating to a rookie cookie.

We liked the robust ramen recipe. Ditto for the chile con queso, with simple ingredients that include cream of celery soup.

And there's also not a huge amount of content -- 65 recipes in total. Once you remove the recipes you know you'll never make -- what kind of self-respecting Southerner would pour maple syrup on grits? -- there's not that much left.

The sophomoric language used throughout is deliberate and poorly done. Is there any reason to drop the F bomb in a cookbook?

Almost, but not quite, making up for all sins is the photograph of a crab salad sandwich on Page 50. Crab salad, garnished with sliced tomato, served on a hot dog bun.

The photo is good enough to eat, and the recipe is simple and effective. It's one of those "Why didn't I think of that?" recipes.

And that's the best part of "Gentlemen." Even if you already know how to cook, the book will offer you "Why didn't I think of that?" ideas for food.

But do the simple recipes overcome the cheesy art, the too-little content and the inappropriate language?

No. Not really.
Contact Lee Barnes at (804) 775-8129 or lbarnes@timesdispatch.com.