Mike and Amy Mills are a father-daughter team from southern Illinois. Mike was trained as a dental technician. "I made false teeth — crowns, bridges, partials — this type of thing. It's what I did as a trade," he recalls. "Later on, I started barbecuing just for the fun of doing it." And that's what made him famous. Mike is 75 now. Along with a pen and glasses, he carries a meat thermometer in his shirt pocket. He doesn't like to brag, but he has won numerous international barbecue competitions. He is even in the Barbecue Hall of Fame in Kansas City, Mo. In short, the guy standing on my porch on a recent rainy day is a barbecue legend. With his daughter Amy, he runs a place in Murphysboro, Ill., called 17th Street Barbecue , where they spread "the gospel of barbecue," as Amy puts it. Hence the title of their new cookbook, Praise the Lard: Recipes and Revelations from a Legendary Life in Barbecue. It has simple recipes like pimento cheese and tangy coleslaw, as well as more ambitious
↧