Eryngo (Qurs’anneh) Salad

Qurs’anneh is a spiny herb that grows wild in the villages of Syria’s coastal mountains; botanists call it Eryngium creticum, a kind of eryngo. The salad is never cooked: the herb is chopped and mixed with salt, lemon and olive oil. It tastes sharp and slightly bitter. In the countryside around Tartus and Baniyas it is a spring plate at home, and people in town buy the herb from the greengrocer and make the same salad.

When and how it is gathered

In spring, after the winter rains have stopped once and started again. In the method described by Hassan Ismail, a Tartus researcher of local customs, the short stem is cut from the top with a sharp knife. It goes into a cloth bag hung from the shoulder so it stays fresh.

Three ways to make it

• With tomato: the herb is cut into medium pieces and mixed with salt, olive oil, a medium tomato and lemon.
• Washed: to take the edge off the bitterness it is washed in salted water, changing the water three times, then rinsed in unsalted water. It comes to the table with crushed garlic, lemon juice, salt and olive oil.
• The Baniyas village way: the herb is chopped very fine and rubbed with salt, then squeezed and washed, and dressed with lemon and salt.

An old herb

This is not a new habit. The physician Dawud al-Antaki names the plant qurs’anneh in his Tadhkira. Arabic sources also describe a lunch salad made from the leaves without spines, dressed with olive oil.

Not the same as akkoub

Both are spiny spring plants, but they are different plants. Akkoub is trimmed and cooked; qurs’anneh is eaten raw, as a salad.

Before you pick it

A wild herb can be confused with poisonous look-alikes. Qurs’anneh is not gathered without someone who knows it. The safe route is to buy it from a greengrocer, or from someone in the village who picks it.