Barbecue Sauce

DAMIEN NOBLE TALKS about his barbecue sauce the way others talk about true love or the Second Coming or the Harmonic Convergence or a miracle cure."It's time, it really is time," Noble says of the flood of sauce he is about to unleash on the Baltimore, Washington, Virginia region.A foodie by birth -- his father owned a restaurant in Rochester, N.Y. -- Noble, 34, can't get barbecue sauce out of his veins.Back in 1976, he began to play with assorted ingredients as well as spices picked up in Antigua.

When you make your own barbecue sauce, you are never quite satisfied with how it tastes.You struggle with the urge to endlessly fiddle with the recipe.And sometimes you wrestle with what you are going to call the bTC concoction. Do you name it after yourself? After a relative? Or how about naming it after the dog?These fine points of sauce-making became apparent to me recently when I spoke with some of the folks who had whipped up barbecue sauces for a contest at Baltimore's Center Stage.

Sometimes the way to spruce up supper is hiding in the fridge, in the form of preserves sitting in a jelly jar. That proved to be the case the other night, an instance when supper sneaked up on me. I had been immersed in the usual late-December duties - decking the halls, stringing the lights, watching televised football - when mealtime appeared on the horizon. I pulled open the freezer and considered various possibilities - a block of chicken breasts, a string of Italian sausages, a slab of something unidentifiable - then my eyes settled on pork tenderloin.

He's young, he's talented and he's the new chef at Atlanta's hot Horseradish Grill. This July, Dave Berry will introduce thousands of hungry Olympic visitors to real Southern food. With this menu, you can join them.Grilled pork tenderloinMakes 6 servings2 3/4 -pound pork tenderloins, trimmed of fat1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepperNorth Carolina barbecue sauce (recipe below)Brush tenderloins with Worcestershire sauce and sprinkle with pepper. Place in a shallow dish, cover and marinate in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours or up to 8 hours.

MAYBE IT IS the hand-lettered sign proclaiming "shrimps" that I see when I am headed to the ocean. Maybe it is the fact that shrimp seem to be good swimmers with tight bodies clad in form-fitting shells. Or maybe it is because as the temperature soars, the idea of eating something light and water-based seems very appealing. Whatever the reason, when summer hits, I want shrimp at suppertime. Recently, I ate shrimp fixed three different ways -- cloaked in bacon and barbecue sauce; tossed with linguine, broccoli and pecorino Romano cheese; and grilled, then served with chopped herbs.

I grew up believing that you ate brisket to honor St. Patrick. On St. Patrick's Day, supper was either corned beef brisket or its cousin, roast beef brisket. I preferred the cousin, a brisket that had been dusted with seasoned flour, seared in a little oil, sprinkled with a package of dry onion soup and cooked in a heavy lidded pot in about 3/4 cup of water over low heat on the stove top. In keeping with Irish tradition, this brisket was cooked to death, bubbling on the burner for an entire afternoon.

It's the time of year to enjoy the simple pleasure of cookin outdoors and eating relaxed meals on the deck. A down-home, (( all-American meal is in order, and this week's menu of barbecued chicken, potatoes and slaw, fits the bill. The meal is ready in well under an hour. The fact that the fat content has been slashed by half without sacrificing traditional flavor is an added perk.The barbecue sauce for the chicken requires no cooking: It relies on a combination of Asian condiments (all available at most supermarkets)

Labor Day holiday gatherings can be especially festive because they're often that last chance for an all-out al fresco bash combined with a nostalgic goodbye to summer. For cookouts on the beach, picnics in the pines or homey family gatherings in the back yard, this 30-minute transportable casserole of mildly spicy island flavors works deliciously.After you've prepared and baked the bean casserole at home, simply cover with foil while it's still hot and then wrap a thick towel around it to hold the warmth.

Pikesville shop offers food for memoryMany caterers and gourmet shops in the area prepare traditional holiday foods for those too busy to do their own cooking, but Gourmet Again (3713 Old Court Road, Pikesville) goes them one better. The shop offers a separate "Remember When" section on its holiday menu, dishes that "everybody's bubbe made for them," says co-owner Barbara Collurafici. These are dishes you may not have had in years, such as homemade teglach (rolled dough with honey, above)

Oscar Omar Nelms, a former truck driver, gravedigger and welder at Bethlehem Steel Corp., died Saturday of heart failure at his Northwest Baltimore home. He was 60.For some years, Mr. Nelms nurtured a dream of mass marketing his "No Holds" barbecue sauce, which he worked on in his spare time and sold mostly to friends and relatives. The highly seasoned blend was packaged in a bright orange wrapper and warned users of its heat."It was only fair that he told people before they used it because it could literally blow your mouth off," said a cousin, Wanda Robinson of Baltimore.