I've been spending a majority of my time the last couple of days doing food preparation for a big Thai dinner I'm giving James for his birthday. Most everything can be done prior to actually cooking the phad thai, chicken satay and thai green curry soup. I will skewer the marinated chicken and let Adrianne and Erik control the grilling. The soup is made and can be kept heated in the crock pot. The Asian salad is made and will be dressed just before dinner. The rice cooker will handle the jasmine rice so that all I'll really have to do is make the phad thai at meal time. The key to good and easy phad thai is to have all the ingredients prepared and laid out so the actually cooking goes really fast. The dipping sauces are waiting to be transferred to serving bowls. I bought the birthday cake as I'm drawn to baking about as much as I am to building cabinets.

Kecap manis is added to peanut sauce or satay marinade and a terrific sauce in its own right.

Here's the recipe:
1 cup dark brown sugar
3/4 cup soy sauce
3 tbs molasses
1/2 tsp ground galangal (I used regular ginger root)
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
Bring sugar and 1 cup water to a boil over medium hight heat stirring until sugar dissolves, about 3 minutes.
Continue boiling for about 1 minute.
Reduce heat to medium, stir in soy sauce, molasses, galangal, coriander and pepper.
Simmer until very thick and reduced by a third, about 40 minutes.

Haeh haa!!