Kenger

Gundelia and Chickpea Stew. 

Gundelia is a wild plant that is difficult to forage due to its mountainous growing location and many spiny leaves. It has a taste similar to artichoke. The leaves, stems, roots, and undeveloped flower buds are edible. 

Ways of cooking akkoub vary from frying it with eggs to cooking it with lamb meat and yogurt. To prepare for cooking, the thistles must first be removed, which is a very involved process. The cleaning and preparation of akkoub is a whole ritual.

Mavi Boncuk | Kenger | Tournefort's gundelia[1].

Also known as: Çakır dikeni, çengel otu, henger, kalağan, kengi otu, kepre, kingar, sakız otu, tatlı (sweet) kenger. 

Also known as: tumbleweed, tumble t
histle. It is called Akkoub (Arabic: عكوب‎) in Arabic, silifa in Greek, Akuvit ha-Galgal (Hebrew: עַכּוּבִית הַגַּלְגַּל‎) in Hebrew, Kangar (Armenian: կանկառ) in Armenian and Persian, Kenger in Turkish, and Kereng in Kurdish.

Early in the year, Gundelia plants growing in the wild are cut at the base and the thorns are removed. Leaves, stems, roots, and particularly the undeveloped flowerheads can be eaten. The base of the young leaves which is still under the surface is used by Bedouin and Arabs to make akkub soup. In the West Bank, young flowerheads, stems and leaves are fried in olive oil, mixed with a stew of meat chops until well done, and served mixed with yogurt. Gundelia is said to taste like something between asparagus and artichoke.^[4] Another dish is to put a trimmed inflorescence in a meatball, fry these in olive oil and then simmer them in a sauce containing lemon juice. In rural communities in northern Iraq, Gundelia is still being used as a vegetable, but in Israel collecting for the market resulted in a decline in the plant population and collecting is restricted to personal use.

A chewing gum[2] can be made from the latex, a fact that is already mentioned by Tournefort in 1718, and is called "kenger sakızı" in Turkish. The fruits as well as roots can be roasted and ground to be used as substitute coffee, and is known as "kenger kahvesi". In recent times, mature seeds have been used to extract oil. Remains of charred inflorescences of Gundelia from the neolithic found in Turkey and Iraq indicate that oil was pressed from the seeds as long as at least 10,000  years ago.^[3] The seeds are edible (called سسّي "Sissi" in Northern Iraq); dried, salted and roasted are sold in nut shops, the taste similar to sun flower seeds.

[1] Gundelia is a low to high (20–100 cm) thistle-like perennial herbaceous plant with latex, spiny compound inflorescences, reminiscent of teasles and eryngos, that contain cream, yellow, greenish, pink, purple or redish-purple disk florets. It is assigned to the daisy family. Flowers can be found from February to May. The stems of this plant dry-out when the seeds are ripe and break free from the underground root, and are then blown away like a tumbleweed, thus spreading the seeds effectively over large areas with little standing vegetation. This plant is native to the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle-East.

Pedanius Dioscorides called this plant silybum. The genus Gundelia is named to honor Andreas von Gundelsheimer (1668–1715), a German botanist, while the species name tournefortii was named after Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, a French botanist, who together undertook a botanical journey to the Levant, during which the species was collected, described and illustrated.

Some Bible scholars think that the tumbleweed that is spoken of in Psalm 83, verse 14 "Make them like tumbleweed, O my God, like galgal before the wind" is Gundelia. Akkub, the biblical name for this species, is already mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud.

[2] It is a mastic obtained from the root of the kenger plant grown around Sivas and Malatya. Only one of Kenger gum can be chewed for a month. The reasons why Kenger gum is expensive is that it is difficult to collect the gum in question, and there are very few people to do this job and it is officially a source of healing.