Growing up, I had heard about 螞蟻上樹 but had never had it. In my mind, I pictured something like ants on a log with raisins on celery sticks filled with peanut butter. But, it is a real Sichuan dish, which I found in the the re-issued edition of The Food of Sichuan by Fuchsia Dunlop.

I used Korean sweet potato starch noodle, just because it was what I had on hand. However, one bundle of noodles was quite large, and threw off the recipe. I had to make some adjustments to compensate, as well as add some additional seasonings because my pixian broad bean paste was not as red as the version I saw on YouTube.