Julia Child at home in Omaha

When Julia Child visited Omaha in 1979, we were star-struck.

She was one of six judges for the National Beef Cook-Off, held at the Hilton Hotel (now the Doubletree) downtown at 16th and Dodge Streets.

I got to ask Child some questions at the event. In the same freewheeling manner in which she held forth on her PBS television series, “The French Chef,” she encouraged cooks to be daring in the kitchen, weighed in on the fads of the day, discussed her favorite cuts of beef and dished out tips like hiding your best knives from noncooks who might ruin them.

“Be a fearless cook,” she said. “If you have good directions, you can cook anything.”

And don't wait to take a cooking class, she said.

She saw the pluses and the minuses for the then-trendy French “nouvelle cuisine.”

“The French have been in a straitjacket with classical dishes,” she said. “Nouvelle cuisine released them from those strictures.”

I asked about food processors because I knew local chefs who preferred their knives to the whirling blades in a Cuisinart.

“They are perfectly marvelous inventions,” Child said.

She likened the low-cost Sears model she had been using to a Volkswagen Beetle.

“Sometimes it gets a little tired so you let it rest,” she said.

Beef was the focus of the Omaha event, organized by the American National Cow-Belles (now the American National CattleWomen), and Child described herself as “a meat eater.”

“I'm always happy with a roast of some sort and something cooked with a little love and attention,” she said. “Not counting price, I like the loin strip (often called New York strip in Omaha supermarkets) the best.”

And make that steak medium-rare, she said.

“The juice pearling up from the surface.”

Genevieve Lackaff of Bassett, Neb., was the chairwoman for the National Beef Cook-Off that year.

“Julia was so wonderful,” Lackaff said recently. “I really enjoyed her. Whatever her thoughts were, she let you know. I was thrilled to have her here. It was fun. ”

Lackaff, who worked on the national beef contests for about 10 years and played a role in Child's selection as a judge, said Child wrote a letter of appreciation to the Nebraska organizers after the contest and also served as a judge for the 1980 beef cook-off in Tucson, Ariz.

Jeanene Wehrbein of Plattsmouth, Neb., also has fond memories of meeting Child at the 1979 contest in Omaha.

“When I saw her, I was surprised to see how tall she was,” Wehrbein recalled recently. “She was so tall and I was so short. I interviewed her for my radio show, ‘What's Cooking?' (on air from 1971 to 1990) on KOTD 1000. I probably had 10 or 20 minutes talking with her.”

Child spoke at length for the tape-recorded interview about judging dishes in the contest.

“To this day, I still enjoy watching reruns of her show,” Wehrbein said. She also wished she had held onto the recording of her interview of Child, instead of taping over it for another show.

Contact the writer:

444-1052, jane.palmer@owh.com

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