Ants Climb A Tree

Mrs. Chiang's Szechwan Cookbook : Ants Climb A Tree

Mine looks like this but I forgot to actually take a photo

Wonderful dinner last night.  This is one of our favorites.  There are many many recipes but this is the one I use, sort of.

The dish tends to be rather salty because of all the soy sauce.  So I replace the 1/4 cup of soy and all the water with chicken stock.  It's still a bit salty but delicious.

I've also experimented with replacing the hot pepper paste with hot bean paste.  Again a bit of adjustment to the quantities is necessary as they can both be very salty.  I control the heat with a bit of hot pepper oil or sauce.

Finally, I adjust the noodle to meat quantities since we like a bit more meat than the recipe calls for.  I find about 6 oz of noodles per pound of port about right.

Leftovers for lunch today.  Yum.