Beyond Pad Thai

Although Thai cooking is enormously popular, few recent cookbooks have capitalized on that trend. Now an English publisher has filled the gap with “The Blue Elephant Cookbook” (Pavilion Books; $35) by John Hellon with photographs by Tony Le Duc.

Pebbly makrut limes float through the cover photo like weightless objects in outer space. Inside, similarly stylish art illuminates the book’s theme, Royal Thai cuisine.

This means Thai food that is far fancier than the lunch specials of the typical neighborhood cafe in Los Angeles. A few examples: chicken dumplings pierced with asparagus spears; a vegetable souffle steamed in coconut halves; shrimp stuffed with chicken, sweetened radish and peanuts, wrapped in rice paper, deep-fried and served with a sweet and sour green chile sauce flavored with galangal and pandanus leaves.

The recipes come from the Blue Elephant restaurants, a chain founded by an antiques dealer, Karl Steppe, in Belgium in 1980. The operation has expanded to other European cities, India and the Middle East, and it plans to open a school for chefs in Bangkok.

The book’s wine chapter plays to European tastes, although Northern California gets a nod for its “superior Cabernet Sauvignon reds.” There are instructions for fruit and vegetable carving, which is essential to royal presentation, and the usual explanations of ingredients, cooking procedures and equipment, as well as a chapter on curry pastes and the Blue Elephant’s special sauces.

Most of the dishes are well known here, but it’s interesting to see how chicken satay, fish cakes, barbecued chicken, massaman curry and the like are treated in another part of the world.