Baked Stuffed Buns (Samsa)

Baked stuffed buns are a common Uyghur snack, filled with diced lamb and onion seasoned with cumin and pepper, wrapped into square parcels and baked on the tandoor wall until golden and crisp outside and piping hot and juicy within.

Like naan, baked buns are a fruit of the tandoor tradition, cleverly using the furnace's hot wall to bake dough and meat together, an ingenious dish born of oasis life and found in every Turpan bazaar and roadside shop.

Sold hot from the oven and broken open at once, the crisp crust giving way to a rush of scalding meat juice; it is often a breakfast or afternoon snack, tempered by a bowl of milk tea or yogurt.

The golden tandoor-baked crust, the scalding juicy lamb-and-onion filling, and the square pinched form are the marks of these baked buns.