8 cups water or vegetable or grain or meat stock
8 – 16 cloves Garlic, peeled, whole
1 inch fresh Ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
1½ teaspoons Black Peppercorn whole (or use Long Pepper, a Chinese herb called Bi Ba)
1/4 oz Astragalus Root (comes either in little pieces or long slices which easily can be broken up with your fingers)
1/4 oz Atractylodes Root (Bai Zhu)
1/4 oz Eleuthro Root (Siberian Ginseng)
1/4 oz Marshmallow Root
Place all of the above in large pot and simmer covered for 2 hours. Strain or take out all herbs with slotted spoon.
3 cups chopped Carrots (~6 carrots) 3 cups chopped Turnips (~3 turnips with skins) 1 teaspoon Sea Salt Simmer in herb broth until desired tenderness.
Using a ladle, spoon out 4 cups of vegetables & broth being careful to dip down to bottom of pot to get good ratio of vegetables to broth. Puree in a blender and add back to soup pot. This blender step can be omitted and a thin soup broth can be enjoyed.
Add ~ 1 lb Whitefish. Can be cooked in advance or cooked with vegetables above.
After all vegetables and fish are cooked add the following: 4 cloves fresh Garlic, finely chopped or minced 2 teaspoons dried Dill Weed 2 1/2 teaspoons Lemon Juice 3/4 teaspoon Lemon Zest Sea Salt adjust amount if necessary
Black Pepper to taste
No need to cook soup further. Serving soup before garlic cooks is a better flavor.
Add cooked rice at last minute. If grain sits in soup for longer periods of time the grain can soak up all or most of the broth.
AUTUMN HERBAL SOUP VARIATIONS:
With tomato sauce, barley, black beans and Mediterranean herbs
With white fish, rice, lemon juice, dill
With winter squash blended with chunks of onion, carrot and black beans or walnuts
Sweet, sour with beets, turnips, mustard greens, carrots and tomato sauce