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This is my version of our favorite from a local Thai restaurant.  If you want a strictly vegetarian version, use half soy sauce half rice wine vinegar instead of fish sauce.  If you want more protein, you can throw some tofu in along with the eggplant and carrots.

Mel and I can’t get enough of this.  It goes well with my Spicy Eggplant recipe.  I make it in the rice cooker:

• 2 cups jasmine rice
• 2 cups water
• 1 can of coconut milk

First, I wash the rice, then add the coconut milk and water.  The trick is to fold the rice a couple of times as it cooks, in order to move the coconut milk down into the rice.  Without folding, the coconut milk will just collect on the surface.
Also, when the rice cooker turns off, give the rice one more quick flip, and then let it sit to absorb the coconut milk.

When in Cusco, Peru, heart of the ancient Inca empire, it would be hard to find a restaurant name more generic than “Inca Food”, yet on a friend’s recommendation, Mel and I found ourselves tucked in a corner of this far less than generic restaurant in Cusco’s historic San Blas neighborhood. Just half a block from the central art museum, itself a Spanish construction on a base of precise Incan stonework, we’ve found one of the few restaurants in the neighborhood that actually plays peruvian music—every other restaurant we have attended so far has had their radio pinned to one of the handful of 80s stations.
“Inca Food” offers a variety of traditional and modernized dishes, including this gorgeously prepared Alpaca meat breaded not with wheat but with whole quinoa.
Mel continues to be surprised at how much food one gets for so few Soles. Here, the set menu includes a beef stew, a main dish of either Chicken or fish, and a small dessert for under US$3.
The peaceful ambience is complemented by rather attractive contemporary and traditional art. Unpretentious and inviting, this was a good night out and a good find.

We paid too much for our taxi from the airport. The very first taxi station was inside the terminal just past the customs agents. After pressing the button and getting a red mark and being asked to submit my bags to a scan, I was just so exhausted at 5:30am that the first taxi got our business. $33 worth of it. But for that price we got a swift tour of the coastal road that runs south from Lima proper, below the bluffs of Miraflores, into the bohemian neighborhood of Barranco.

View of the ocean from our Backpacker Inn Hostel room in Lima