This past week I made the Ants Climbing Trees (Sichuan Cellophane Noodles with Pork and Chiles) recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook.

This noodle dish calls for “dry bean thread noodles” which Kenji notes “are also called cellophane noodles or glass noodles. Look for noodles made with mung bean starch.” I couldn’t find these at Your DeKalb Farmers Market, and the nearby First Oriental Market is closed on Sundays, but I was able to find them at Nam Dae Mun. I’m confident Super H-Mart and Buford Highway Farmers Market would have had them, but Nam Dae Mun is much closer to me than those.

Kenji also calls for green Sichuan peppercorn. I’ve never seen these before, and since he notes that red can be used in place and I already have red Sichuan peppercorns on hand, I didn’t bother hunting for green ones.

Like dry rice noodles, the dry bean thread noodles are soaked in very hot water until softened. The Sichuan peppercorns are fried in oil and then ground pork is added and cooked until done. Garlic, scallions, pickled chile, and doubanjiang (Sichuan broad bean chile paste) are added, and everything is stir-fried until the doubanjiang has turned the oil red.

Then the sauce is added and brought to a simmer. Kenji instructs to lay the noodles on top of the simmering mixture for half a minute, and then lift and fold the noodles and sauce over. He is very particular about not moving the noodles too vigorously to keep them from getting “sticky.”

Once the sauce is mostly absorbed, scallion greens and cilantro are folded in.

We thought the final dish was just ok. It was very hot and numbing, but not much flavor beyond that. I was excited, because I’m a fan of doubanjiang, but I think the heat was just too much for us and either overpowered other flavors or they just weren’t there.

I don’t think I’ll make this one again.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.