Christine DuBois-Devlin with Julian’s Recipe on Culinary Arts Month

Culinary Arts Month is being celebrated in July, with many towns and cities in New Jersey hosting restaurant week events. The guest, Christine Dubois-Devlin from Julian's Recipe, shares tips for celebrating Culinary Arts Month, including using high-quality ingredients and good cookware. She also mentions the importance of having all the necessary ingredients before starting a recipe and toasting spices to enhance their flavor. Christine promotes Julian's Recipe products, such as their European breads, which can be used to create delicious meals at home. She shares a recipe for bruschetta with prosciutto, ricotta, and arugula. Christine emphasizes the convenience and high quality of Julian's Recipe products and encourages listeners to visit their website for more recipes and information on where to purchase their products. So many things that we're marking in the month of July, and certainly not to be forgotten about, is Culinary Arts Month that is being celebrated. We hear about so many different towns and cities across our state that are doing restaurant week celebrations that are happening across our state here. And when you get and think about it, you know, culinary and arts, there are two words that should really go together. The restaurant business versus culinary arts are two really, really different things. And my guest who's joining me this morning here at the RNJ Morning Program, just with some tips and some things that we could use to celebrate our Culinary Arts Month. Joining me from Julian's Recipe, we have Christine Dubois-Devlin, who is checking in on the program today. Christine, hi, it's Burt Barron, WRNJ Radio in New Jersey. How are you today? I'm doing quite well, very well, Burt. Glad to be on your program this morning. Well, good to have you. Talking about Culinary Arts Month. Good, good, good to have you here. And I think the dining scene in New Jersey, you know, maybe some other parts of the country didn't take the arts, the dining and restaurant scene in New Jersey all that seriously for a period, Christine. But I think we've come a long way. I would put some of the restaurants, some of our chefs, we've got some really well-known people that have national and international attention. I think the dining scene and the culinary scene in New Jersey is on the map and it's here to stay. Would you agree with that? I live in New York City. There you go. I agree. I absolutely agree. I would say that New Jersey has really stepped up their game over the last five to ten years. And you have a lot of great restaurants, and I've been to some of them. But I also think that there's a lot of things that we can do ourselves to learn how to be a better chef and use higher ingredients, better ingredients, some of the tricks you can use, tricks of the trade as they call, as they say. And lots of things there. I guess it even comes down to, of course, you know, the training, the people that you work with, you know, having a passion for what you do every day. I think those are just the basics of it. But there are certain things that I think will separate, you know, the good culinary experts to the really great and legendary ones. There's a couple things I think that separate the two. Well, there's no doubt about that. And at Julian's Recipe, we're a brand that we really do separate ourselves. We have authentic old world food. It's frozen. It's prepared with wholesome ingredients. And it's delicious recipes, European recipes and artisan breads. So we really have high quality ingredients that people can purchase and go out and use them for all kinds of recipes, which we'll talk about a recipe at the end. But basically, if you're using good ingredients, you're using good spices, good cookware, you can do a good job at replicating some of even the fanciest recipes. Yeah, I believe it. And rather than, you know, make the journey out to a five-star dining destination and coming across the river from where you are, your products give you the opportunity to enjoy a five-star experience right at home in the comfort of your own home. So I really love the convenience and the availability of that, which is really great, too. Yeah, there's no doubt about it. You know, if you've got good ingredients, and at Julian's we do, we have the owner of our company, Alex Srdetsky. He's a chef by training, and he did things like taro chips and Alexia sweet potatoes. So in our book, taste and premium ingredients are what it's all about. And just to share a couple tips that the professional chefs will tell you about. Some of these I knew myself. Invest in a good set of knives. I just said cookware, but knives are really, really important also. If you really want to make some great things, you have to have a good set of knives. Another thing to always do, and I did this from the beginning when I ever made things, make sure you have all your ingredients before you get started, because the worst thing is to get in the middle of something and go, oops, one of the main ingredients I don't have. So that's really important. Make sure you plan so that you're ready to actually cook. And this is one that I wasn't aware of. Toast your spices. So if you're going to have spices in it, they say to add your spices into a pan with some sweating onions and deglaze them for a couple minutes, that's going to actually enhance the flavor of those spices in your dish. Toasting spices. Did you just give away like a gigantic culinary secret right here? I've never heard of it. I mean, I know somebody's going to say, hey, Chris, you're not much of a chef then, but I never heard of toasting your spices. Interesting. So that's really important. We use in our products just all kinds. Like in our breads, you know, we have garlic, real garlic. People love our breads because they have 18% butter fat. It's European butter. So it's a very high butter fat, all right? The highest it gets in the United States is 16. So it's very savory. The spices we put in there, we have traditional multi-grain with garlic. We also have a pretzel baguette. And then we have a truffle. So we have some truffle salt, a truffle ingredient in our truffle bread. So the ingredients, the spices, whatever the ingredients are, are really important when you're cooking. Yeah. And it's great to have a good base, such as a bread or a waffle, like ours are, that are very convenient and that you can just layer on to make something special. No wonder why your stuff tastes so good. And you mentioned, too, you made a great point there, too, about having your ingredients available. Because if you're doing something that's maybe not the easiest thing in the world to make or maybe you're facing a tight deadline, listen, if you don't have everything that you need ready to go, you're sunk. You're in really, really deep trouble. So that's why you leave it to the pros like what you guys are offering. That's what it's about. Well, let me talk about one of our recipes. Sure. It's a really quick, easy recipe. It's Julian's recipe, bruschetta with prosciutto. I can't say that word well. Ricotta and arugula. And it's basically very easy. You just take one of our baguettes. You prepare it and slice it. Have some extra virgin olive oil, a clove of garlic, some ricotta cheese, some arugula leaves, and some prosciutto. How do you say that word anyway? You're pretty close. You're pretty close. Did I say it right? Anyway. There's a bunch of different ways. Yeah, people say it different ways. So all you want to do is simple. You heat the grill or if you've got your outside grill going or your inside grill, whichever works for you. People actually have grills you can buy now inside. You place the bread on it. You brush the olive oil. It's very simple. Let it get golden for a couple minutes. Rub the garlic on each side. Spread a tablespoon or two of the ricotta on each bread slice. Press the arugula leaf into the cheese. Place a slice of the prosciutto on top. Drizzle with olive oil and serve. And I'm telling you, I've had this, and it's quick, it's simple, and people are impressed. They think you went to the local store and got yourself some appetizers. Yeah, or they think you stopped at this really high-end restaurant and brought some stuff home to be able to impress your guests with. Wow. Oh, there's no doubt about it. And I'll tell you, I use our breads at the holidays also or any special event that you're having, and people actually think that you made it yourself. Wow. And I love that because then I can say to them, hey, this is frozen bread. And they're like, oh, no, I don't believe that. I don't believe that. You had to have fresh made this. So that's the kind of quality we have at Julian's. Alex is very, as I said, he's a chef by background, and we like to give people good quality specialty food with high-end ingredients that they can do what they want with. They can either make a waffle and eat it plain with some maple syrup on it, or they can put some other things on it and make a little meal out of it, another type of meal. Yeah, exactly. Something that's memorable in a good way that people will want to tell their friends about and be able to share with people, whether it's a nice summer night, maybe just enjoying the outdoors, maybe on a nice night here, a nice weather-wise to be able to enjoy something like this, but just make it as special as possible for people. My guest this morning at the RNJ Morning Program, Christine Dubois-Devlin with Julian's Recipe, and we're celebrating the culinary month that is going on now, Culinary Arts Month for the month of July, with some great recipe ideas. The Julian's line, where can we find that? You can find it at lots of different places in the area, Whole Foods, ShopRite carries it. Lots of independent class stores carry it, especially specialty stores. One thing that's great is we have tons of recipes online, so you just go to our www.juliansrecipe.com. We have all kinds of recipes throughout the year, winter, summer, spring design, and you can also follow us, of course, on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. So we're easy to find. If you can't find us, reach out to us. We'll let you know in your area where something's sold, but in Jersey, there's a lot of options. You know, Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut, we have a lot of stores that we're in. So please go out and buy our breads and our waffles. Enjoy them, like you said, on a night. Grill something up outside with your bread and just enjoy. It's beautiful. Yeah, and Jersey, we got everything here, Christine, you know that. We're Jersey. We got the best of everything. And I could just imagine myself trying all these wonderful Julian's Recipe things and then all of a sudden realizing, oh, hey, the sun is coming up. I guess I better get to work or something now because this stuff is that good, exactly. Christine Dubois, Devlin, Julian's Recipe, thank you for the time this morning. Really great recipes that you shared as well. Hopefully people will go to the website and check that out and some more as well. And enjoy the rest of Culinary Arts Month. It was great speaking with you today. Thank you very much.