October 21, 1981

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said yesterday that it had called ''an extraordinary conference'' in Geneva on Oct. 29 in an effort to heal the bitter pricing dispute that has divided it for most of this year. What appears to be emerging as a compromise, according to several OPEC sources, is a unified basic price of $34 a barrel, ending the dual pricing system that has prevailed since last December. This would entail Saudi Arabia raising its basic price by $2 a barrel and other members lowering their prices by the same amount. ''We are hopeful the unification of price at $34 a barrel will be reached,'' said Subroto, Indonesia's oil minister and OPEC's president, in Jakarta. ''My feeling is that there is not too much problem to that.''

Linda West Eckhardt is the author of ''The Only Texas Cookbook,'' published this month by the Texas Monthly Press. By LINDA WEST ECKHARDT BLUE smoke curls against a magenta evening sky. The smell of scalding coffee and sourdough biscuits drifts on the breeze. Iron pots creak gently over pulsing red coals. There's a chance to finally eat something besides dust. The cowboy stands, a tin plate cold in his hand, waiting for Cookie to signal that he may begin. At last the cook turns to face him. Cookie is a skinny little fellow, brown as Recipes are on page C6. a coffee bean, wizened and stooped; he has a ladle in one hand and a coffee pot in the other. He pulls a face designed to run off the faint-hearted and hollers, ''Come and get it.'' Supper on the Texas trail has begun.

ONE of the pleasures of working with professional chefs is that there will not be much wasted energy in their planning and executing almost any menu that comes to mind. When an old friend, Roger Verge, chef and owner of the three-star Moulin de Mougins (as well as the one-star Amandier) in the hills above Cannes, was last in New York, he agreed, on short notice, to cook a meal. The dishes he prepared, most of which were unknown to me, came from his recent book, ''Cuisines of the South of France'' (William Morrow & Company, $14.95). They included an appetizer of hot oysters with orange sections; roast rack of lamb baked with a meringuelike topping flavored with parsley, mustard and green peppercorns; a zucchini and tomato casserole, and a bitter-chocolate mousse. The 50-year-old Mr. Verge said that he had never had a serious interest in cooking until he was 17 years old and became an apprentice in a small restaurant kitchen in the South of France. When he was 16, he said, he had no particular professional interests other than a desire to become a pilot, and he believes that it was his desire to travel that has inspired him as much as anything in his career.

One of the more successful mutual funds is not operating from Wall Street, but rather from the headquarters of Gulf and Western, a $5.3 billion conglomerate whose diverse subsidiaries bring forth auto parts, women's apparel, movie hits like ''Raiders of the Lost Ark,'' and raw sugar. Gulf and Western, of course, does not operate a mutual fund in the traditional sense, where investors buy shares in a managed securities portfolio. But it does maintain a hefty $355.8 million portfolio of stocks in 16 other companies, and that makes the distinction between it and a mutual fund a fine one indeed. For, when an investor buys a share in G.&W., he not only purchases a claim on the earnings and assets of G.&W. itself, but also, indirectly, has purchased a slice of those 16 companies as well. G.&W. has turned a mundane corporate function - maintaining a reserve of marketable securities - into an art that has increased the company's earnings, offset the cyclicality of its businesses and helped provide a smooth upward earnings curve.

THE Reagan Administration, through budget cuts and policy proposals, is changing the course of Federal food and nutrition programs. The changes, some already made, others expected shortly, affect everything from what consumers buy in the supermarket to what their children eat in school. They include beef grading standards; food safety and labeling; Government guidelines for diet; meat and poultry inspection and food plant sanitation; school breakfast and lunch programs; day-care and summer feeding programs, and supplemental food for low-income pregnant women, infants and young children. Responsibility for these programs is shared by the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. However, it is in the Agriculture Department that the greatest changes are apparent.