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] and I suspect that Michael still has his - and we can both aim them well -- furry parasites beware 
Baklava is a rich, sweet pastry featured in many cuisines of the former Ottoman, Arab, and Iranian countries. It is a pastry made of layers of filo dough filled with chopped nuts and sweetened with syrup or honey.
The history of baklava is not well-documented; it has been claimed by many ethnic groups, the best evidence is that it is of Central Asian Turkic origin, with its current form being developed in the imperial kitchens of the Topkapı Palace.
Vryonis (1971) identified the ancient Greek gastris, kopte, kopton, or koptoplakous, mentioned in the Deipnosophistae, as baklava, and calls it a "Byzantine favorite". However, Perry (1994) shows that though gastris contained a filling of nuts and honey, it did not include any dough; instead, it involved a honey and ground sesame mixture similar to modern pasteli or halva.
Perry then assembles evidence to show that layered breads were created by Turkic peoples in Central Asia and argues that the "missing link" between the Central Asian folded or layered breads (which did not include nuts) and modern phyllo-based pastries like baklava is the Azerbaijani dish Bakı pakhlavası, which involves layers of dough and nuts. The traditional Uzbek puskal or yupka and Tatar yoka, sweet and salty savories (boreks) prepared with 10-12 layers of dough, are other early examples of layered dough style in Turkic regions.
The thin phyllo dough as used today was probably developed in the kitchens of the Topkapı Palace. Indeed, the sultan presented trays of baklava to the Janissaries every 15th of Ramadan in a ceremonial procession called the Baklava Alayı.
Other claims about its origins include: that it is of Assyrian origin, dates back to ancient Mesopotamia, and was mentioned in a Mesopotamian cookbook on walnut dishes; that al-Baghdadi describes it in his 13th-century cookbook; that it was a popular Byzantine dessert. But Claudia Roden and Andrew Dalby find no evidence for it in Arab, Greek, or Byzantine sources before the Ottoman period.
One of the oldest known recipes for a sort of proto-baklava is found in a Chinese cookbook written in 1330 under the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty under the name güllach (Buell, 1999). "Güllaç" is found in Turkish cuisine. Layers of phyllo dough are put one by one in warmed up milk with sugar. It is served with walnut and fresh pomegranate and generally eaten during Ramadan.
In Turkey, Gaziantep is famous for its baklava and regarded there as its native city, though it only appears to have been introduced to Gaziantep from Damascus in 1871. In 2008, the Turkish patent office registered a geographical indication certificate for Antep Baklava.
The word baklava entered English from Turkish; it is sometimes connected with the Arabic word for "bean" (بقلة /baqlah/), but Wehr's dictionary lists them as unrelated; the Arabic name is doubtless a borrowing from Turkish. Buell (1999) argues that the word "baklava" may come from the Mongolian root baγla- 'to tie, wrap up, pile up' composed with the Turkic verbal ending -v; baγla- itself in Mongolian is a Turkic loanword. The name baklava is used in many languages with minor phonetic variations.
Does it really matter where it originated? It is VERY tasty!
I want them to be authentic though and hopefully as good as homemade. 
May the Lord God bless them both.
I believe these two men have an intimate relationship with Christ, and have learned from the Master so much that we all could benefit from.
I am always inspired by Patriarch Bartholomew. May the Lord bless him and give him life, make him blessed on the earth and deliver him not the will of his enemies.
Amen!
I hope people realize that if you don't post in a thread, the thread sinks to the bottom and then falls off the first page. In general when it falls off the first page nobody bothers to look at it anymore.
