The bird is meticulously cut into 120 slices and served with fermented bean paste, light pancakes, sliced cucumbers and green onions.

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Add the chili bean paste, the spices, the potatoes, the soy sauce and the beer, cover the pot and let it boil.

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The Dango brothers may yet make their comeback, covered with sweet-bean paste.

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They are usually made out of flour and filled with lotus seed paste or sweet bean paste, with cheaper versions filled with sweet potatoes.

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In Indonesia, franchises offer durian and lychee flavoured doughnuts, while in Korea, red bean paste is a popular filling and green tea and garlic are popular glazes.

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Ito, whose family ran a miso (bean paste) factory following his father's early death when Ito was 12, has said he wasn't interested in architecture as a youth.

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Together they sold mainly soya and oyster sauces, bean paste and plum paste in bulk under the Sin Hwa Dee label to the restaurant, hotel and catering industries.

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But before partaking of the deep-green elixirs, guests are offered tea sweets known as wagashi: beautiful, bite-size confections made with ingredients ranging from red bean paste to green tea itself.

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Though they have their differences, they all want to be reborn as tastier dumplings coated with a sweet-bean paste, and to remain side by side, as before, on the same skewer.

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As his wife shopped, two boys in the back seat strained to see a popular Japanese cartoon show about a bean-paste-filled superhero on the 6-inch-wide screen.

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