Purslane and Job's-Tears Barley Soup

Why people make this soup

Plenty of middle-aged and older people with lower immunity catch shingles (“growing a snake”) in autumn and winter. It’s the chickenpox virus, dormant in the body, flaring back up: clusters of red blisters like “pairs of eyes,” densely packed, that sting like needles and burn. Treatment matters in the first one to three days — Chinese or Western — and acting at the very start can clear it within a week, but once the virus has damaged the nerve, the pain can last months or even years. On the food-therapy side, Nourilo shares this soup of fresh purslane and Job’s-tears barley, which he finds especially helpful for the spleen-weak, damp-heat type, whose blisters are pale red, fragile and prone to weeping.