Huyang Braised Mutton with Flatbread

Huyang braised mutton with flatbread is a traditional dish of Dunhuang and the Hexi Corridor: bone-in mutton is first stewed into a rich broth, then thin sheets of dough are laid over the meat and the pot covered to simmer slowly, so the bread drinks in the juices, the meat falling tender, the bread chewy, the flavour deep and savoury.

The dish fuses the foodways of the peoples along the Silk Road—the character "hu" points to a western, foreign wind—and the practice of cooking mutton and wheaten food together has been handed down in Dunhuang for generations, reflecting its multicultural Silk Road cuisine.

Brought to the table in its pot, the bread and meat are eaten together, the bread dipped in sauce and folded around the mutton, rich, savoury and filling, a Dunhuang dish that is at once staple and centrepiece.

The single-pot method of bread and meat together, the bread drinking in the juices, and the contrast of falling-tender mutton against chewy sauce-soaked flatbread are the marks of this dish.