You're assuming the description always has to be two lines. It obviously doesn't nor should it be. Google's goal when displaying the description underneath the page title is to help users determine if the site listed is a good match for their search query and thus worth visiting. A concise description is the ideal and I am sure Google strives to do that at every opportunity. However, if they do have what they need to do so, they'll show as much information as they need to to help users understand what that page is about.
In the first example it is clearly a recipe and the description is a perfect companion to the page title. Without bothering to view the site's source code they may be using microdata or other information to help Google understand the page is a recipe and to parse the information accordingly. It's also very likely that Google recognizes the page as being a recipe and is able to discern the proper description for the recipe (that's where semantic markup comes in real handy). It's also possible that description comes from the DMOZ directory which Google will use for a page's description (although it seems unlikely in this case).
In the second example the site either has no DMOZ listing, no meta tag, or has poor/no content which can displayed (i.e. the page is made in flash, only uses images, or frames).
