afikra Matbakh: Food Historian Charles Perry

Join this interview with food historian Charles Perry on the afikra Matbakh series.

Born in LA, Charles Perry is known as one of world’s foremost experts on medieval Arabic cuisine, having majored in Middle Eastern studies at Princeton and then UC, Berkeley, and having spent a year studying Arabic in Shemlan, Lebanon, in the early ‘60s, giving him his first real taste of the region and its food. He became a food writer for the Los Angeles Times, and in 2005 Perry translated from Arabic A Baghdad Cookery Book, also known as Al-Baghdadi’s Kitab al-Tabikh, the only medieval Arabic cookbook known to the English-speaking world.