The first time I had ants climbing a tree was when my aggressively Chinese peer made this for a quick weeknight dinner. She makes a lot of good things but this is one of my favorites because I really like cellophane noodles and its chewiness and ability to absorb a lot of flavor. So, when I came across this recipe when I was flipping through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok, I decided to put this next on my list of things to make.

The opportunity to make this came this past Friday for my team meeting dinner potluck. This came together very quickly, in less than 30 minutes.

The first step was soaking the cellophane noodles in boiling water for 15 minutes. As that was soaking, I minced up a jalapeno, some scallions, and a few garlic cloves.

Then, I fried up some Sichuan red peppercorns in some oil and tossed in the pork until lightly browned, followed by the other aromatics and some doubanjiang, as well as the sauce. It was really starting to look like mapo tofu at this point.

However, instead of tofu, I added the soaked cellophane noodles, which were soft at this point and added some of the starch water to mimic what I’ve learned from mixing in pasta. After mixing it in, it all came together. It was a little wetter than expected so the the ground pork slid off the noodles. The end product was that it looked more like ants falling off the tree, more than climbing on the tree, so I was a little bit bummed about that.

The dish tasted pretty good. I think I also added a tad too much doubanjiang because it tasted very much like I was eating mapo tofu with a kick and some noodles. I didn’t have a personal problem with this though. One highlight was that when I brought it over for the meeting potluck, one bro who is known for being a really good chef, commented that he liked the kick of the noodles. I’ll take the win. Though maybe not executed in the way it was supposed to be and likely doesn’t do what my friend created any justice, this is a pretty quick and easy weeknight dish to make.