New tricks

Palisa Anderson expertly navigates her way through rows of sun-ripened fruit and vegetables, cherry tomatoes to the left and apple eggplants to the right, before stopping at a thriving plant towering with glossy green leaves. “Here!” she says. “These are galangal flowers.” She delicately picks a bunch from the plant, hands one to me and places the rest in a woven basket. I eat the small white flower; it’s fragrant and spicy. “Thais didn’t have chilli until about 400 years ago, so they used these aromats as spice.”

Galangal is an essential ingredient in Thai cuisine and is one of more than 100 varieties of plants grown at Palisa Farm – a working farm in the Hua Hin district of Thailand, a three-hour drive south