The Basics Soup

One way to use immunity-enhancing mushrooms such as reishi and shiitake is to eat them as part of your regular diet. The mushroom soup recipes provided here are thanks to my friend and fellow herbalist Christopher Hobbs. He says that he has seen soups like these restore vigor and health to adults and children who were weak and ill. It will also benefit your urinary tract, especially if you are prone to bladder infection. Barley is an old European remedy for this problem, garlic treats infection and mushrooms boost the immune system. The Mushroom Barley Soup has been adapted from Hobbs's book Medicinal Mushrooms. Here, too, it is a basic soup made using Chinese herbs. You can find many adaptations of this soup designed to treat different conditions in Between Heaven and Earth: A Guide to Chinese Medicine, by my friends Harriet Beinfield and Efrem Korngold. I love this soup and cannot imagine a tastier way to good health.

Mushroom Barley Soup

¼ cup barley

¾ cup soup stock

2½ cups water

2 teaspoons tamari (or ¼ teaspoon salt)

½ cup chopped onion

1 or 2 cloves garlic, minced

2 teaspoons olive oil

½ pound fresh medicinal mushrooms (such as shiitake)

black pepper to taste

Cook barley in soup stock until tender. Add water and tamari. In a separate pan, sauté onions and garlic in olive oil. When onions are transparent, add mushrooms. When mushrooms and onions are tender, add them to the barley-tamari mixture. Sprinkle in black pepper, cover and simmer gently for 20 minutes. For variety, add cooked vegetables of your choice, either chopped or grated.

Chinese Soup

2 ounces Chinese herbs (such as astragalus, ginseng, rehmannia, codonopsis, ligustrum, burdock and shizandra berries)

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh ginger

1/8 cup uncooked rice

4 cups soup stock

1 diced carrot

1 beet or 1 turnip, diced

1 diced yam

¼ cup shiitake mushrooms, slivered

Place the herbs (including ginger) in a muslin bag or tie them together with a string. Simmer the bag and rice in the soup stock for 1 hour. Add the vegetables and mushrooms to the herbal stew, and simmer gently for another 30 minutes. Remove the bag filled with herbs, and serve the soup. If you use burdock in this soup, it can be finely chopped and need not go in a bag.