Word: couscous
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Even by the standards of Hollywood, the Third World and the CIA (and they all apply), Burt Nelson has real problems. Burt, who narrates this stingingly funny picaresque, is in Morocco to write the script of an Arab-backed movie biography of Muhammad, a "couscous Western," as the director calls it. Along the way, Burt becomes entangled with the producer's secretary-mistress, a Palestinian terrorist, and is kidnaped by Moroccan radicals who rashly expect his employers to pay $1 million in ransom. Burt, however, not only knows his "onions on Islam," he is a part-time spook...
...things seem certain: they will bicker vociferously among themselves, and then they will raise the price of their precious crude. That is precisely what happened at the OPEC oil ministers' 57th meeting last week at the El Aurassi hotel in Algiers. After lavish feasting on caviar and couscous, the oil ministers argued until 3 a.m. but then reached a compromise that allowed some of them to push the price of oil still higher. The 13 countries decided to set a price ceiling of $32 per bbl. on crude. For certain higher quality grades of oil, the price could...
There is talk of Cuisinarts and couscous and knives as the group waits for the class to start. Then everybody scribbles away on a clipboard while Hazan ticks off on two big wall maps the different gastronomical and geographical regions of Italy ("We have 6,000 basic recipes"), expounds the secrets of olive oil, flour and cow cheese, goat cheese and sheep cheese. As if photographing each step on their minds, the students crane forward to retain the maestra's skill in boning chicken breasts ("Save the skins!"), her hammering of scallopini, her preparation from scratch of four-egg pasta...
Family life revived-with a vengeance. "She thought everybody should experience international cooking," Charlie recalls. "She served Greek dishes, North African couscous, Turkish goulash, and she and the kids would dress up in the costumes of the country of that evening, and I was supposed to read about it from the encyclopedia. The point was that I saw how hard she was trying, and I couldn't help but respond. Her efforts showed up my failures...
...monetary crises created by big-power policies. After calling for a common monetary policy among developing nations, he concluded: "Our political independence will remain illusory unless we achieve a true economic liberation." In a draft economic declaration, the Algerian delegation went on to spell out a kind of couscous brand of nonalignment; it urged recognition of the right of Third World countries to nationalize foreign companies and a redefinition of the role of the World Bank so that its financial resources would be more equitably distributed...