Having little prior exposure to fine dining, Danler found that her learning curve was steep, but the job inspired a lifelong love of gustatory pleasures. Even the bathroom of her Echo Park bungalow is decorated with the De Long grape varietal table, a technical chart used by vintners to index fruit. “I eat whatever I want in restaurants,” she says. “I’m not able to restrict myself with food in any way shape or form, but I do pay attention.”
But when Danler cooks for herself, she makes an effort toward self-restraint, counterbalancing those rich restaurant meals. Her friend Carly de Castro, a founder of Pressed Juicery and The Chalkboard Magazine, is a healthy influence: It was de Castro who first introduced Danler to the basic tenets of Ayurvedic cooking along with the recipe for kitchari, a dish made from red lentils and rice.
An Ayurvedic diet, based on traditional Hindu medicine, is rooted in the idea of eating according to one’s body type. Meals are tailored to balance the three doshas, energies as defined by the five elements: space and air, fire and water, water and earth. A monthly break from the individualized approach, the kitchari cleanse is a practice of eating the easy-to-digest, anti-inflammatory pairing of mung dal and rice for three meals a day, four days straight — which Danler now swears by. It is said to be tridoshic, soothing to the system no matter your body’s composition. But for Danler and de Castro, it’s not just about giving things up. Their standing dinner date evolved into “kitchari and mask night,” where the menu is always the same, but the face masks are subject to change.
While this fortifying lentil dish is meant to be as simple as possible, with barely any spice added to the calming base, Danler admits, “once I started making it at home, I began to incorporate all kinds of things you’re really not supposed to — sweet potato, greens, Aleppo pepper and a bunch of lemon juice at the end.” She also cooks the rice and the lentils separately, serving them alongside one another as opposed to simmering them together in a single stew, as is traditional. When she’s home, she prepares the dish once a week, and it’s what she craves when she returns from a trip. “It’s so flavorful, but still lets me reset my system,” she says.
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