Okay, who hasn’t totally screwed up in the kitchen? So, in the interest of misery loves company (or life is easier if you can laugh), my readers have shared some of their funniest kitchen disaster stories.

So get comfy and get ready for a silly read. But, erm, set the timer on your oven, first. Just in case.

Funny kitchen disasters

• Making my first pie crust for a chocolate pecan pie while drinking wine and chatting online.  I couldn’t find a rolling pin, so I figured a wine bottle might work.  It didn’t and I ended up handling the dough too long so it needed to chill again.  I stuck it in the freezer while I started melting chocolate on the stove.  I began chatting with a friend online and subsequently forgot about the dough and the chocolate.  I returned to find a rock solid ball of dough and a pot crusted with very black chocolate.  After regaling my friend with what had occurred, he advised me that friends don’t let friends bake drunk.
• Our dog eats at least one full dessert from the counter every year.  We always forget to put them out of reach!
• The worst kitchen disaster would be just almost setting the kitchen on fire when I was trying to cook dinner for the first time for my boyfriend.
• The worst was when my girlfriend ended up getting a rather large burn on her foot from grease and I thought the fire dept. was going to come due to the smoke bellowing out of our apartment windows. It was soon after that I decided to do almost all of our cooking.
• I once made noodle soup as part of a meal for guests. The guests had car trouble and were 2 hours late. When I was ready to serve the soup as a first course, I opened the pot to find that the noodles had soaked up most of the broth, turning my soup to what amounted to a thick STEW!
• The sprinkle lid on the cayenne bottle fell into the stew… along with the content of the bottle.
• I was up late studying and not all there. I really wanted to make cookies, so I did and I left out a ton of ingredients out on accident. Tip: Never cook when you have had no sleep~!
• My son, Seven, is my kitchen disaster. I turn around for a minute, and he’s got flour all over the counter, in the floor, in his eyelashes.  He’s 2, and quite the little Sous Chef already.
• Spaghetti Pie.  Really, I don’t think I need to say anything more.  It was so bad.  SO.  Bad.  Funny now, though!  LOL!

In this recipe, he uses fennel which is one of my secret ingredients (“What’s that taste? It reminds me of, oh, what is it?” You and I know, it is anise!)

In this recipe, Emeril Lagasse mixes fennel with some greens for a very tasty result. You’ll see.

Vegetarian recipe for Roasted Fennel and Green Bean Relish
We can thank Emeril Lagasse and his book, Emeril’s Creole Christmas, for this one.

1 large bulb fennel (about 1 pound), trimmed, and thinly sliced lengthwise
2 cups thinly sliced onions
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 pound haricots verts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place fennel and onions in a roasting pan. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper; toss to coat. Transfer to oven and roast until vegetables are tender and lightly browned, about 1 1/2 hours. Let cool slightly.

Meanwhile, Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Prepare an ice-water bath; set aside. Add haricots verts to boiling water and cook until just tender, about 3 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer haricots verts to ice water-bath to cool. Drain and set aside.

Combine fennel mixture with haricots verts and transfer to a serving platter. Serve at room temperature.

Speaking of fennel, here are a few other recipes which take advantage of it’s uniquely wonderful taste:

• Fennel, red onion & hazelnut tart
• Vegetarian and Bugs Bunny Soup
• Charlie Trotter’s Shaved Fennel and Apple Salad

This time, I got my inspiration from an American chef who specializes in Mexican cuisine. Now, I’m not crazy for Mexican food (I like it well enough, but if I was stranded on an island, I would not crave it), but there is something about this dish, something special, that makes me think I am not appreciating Mexican food to it’s fullest and I need to explore a bit more.

But, for now, I think I’ll whip out my pot and make a batch of …

Vegetarian recipe for Arroz Verde al Poblano
(Green Poblano Rice)
This tasty, tasty dish is from the talented chef Rick Bayless’ cookbook Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen. It’s amazing how such a simple dish can be so tasty.

1 2/3 cups water
2 fresh poblano chiles, stems and seeds removed, and roughly chopped
12 sprigs cilantro, plus extra for garnish
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vegetable or olive oil
1 cup rice, preferably medium grain
1 small white onion, cut into 1/4-inch dice
5 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped

The flavoring: In a 2-quart saucepan, combine the water and chiles, bring to a boil, then partially cover and simmer gently over medium to medium-low heat for about 10 minutes, until the chiles are very soft. Pour the chile mixture into a food processor, add the cilantro (stems and all), and process to a smooth puree. Press through a medium-mesh strainer into a bowl and stir in the salt.

The rice: Wipe the pan clean, add the oil and heat over medium. Add the rice and onion, and cook, stirring regularly, until the rice is chalky looking and the onion is soft, about 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook a minute longer.

Add the warm (or reheated) chile liquid to the hot rice pan, stir once, scrape down any rice kernels clinging to the side of the pan, cover, and cook over medium-low heat for 15 minutes. Uncover and check a grain of rice: It should be nearly cooked through. If the rice is just about ready, turn off the heat, re-cover and let stand for 5 to 10 minutes longer to complete the cooking. If the rice seems far from done, continue cooking for 5 minutes or so, retest, then turn off the heat and let stand a few minutes longer. Fluff with a fork, scoop into a warm serving dish, decorate with cilantro sprigs and it’s ready to serve.

Advance preparation: The rice can be made several days ahead; turn out the fluffed rice onto a baking sheet to cool, transfer to a storage container, then cover and refrigerate. Reheat the rice in a steamer basket set over boiling water.

Variations and improvisations: An obvious variation is to use 3 or 4 long green (Anaheim) chiles, or to mix poblanos and long greens with hotter chiles like jalapeño, manzano or habanero. Grilled corn cut from 1 cob or 1 large grilled zucchini (cubed) are tasty vegetable add-ins. About 1 cup coarsely shredded roast (or barbecued) pork or smoked salmon, mixed in toward the end of cooking, will make green rice a full meal.

The more rice, the better
Rice recipes are pretty good things to have in your repoitire – rice is a reliable addition to the pantry, and it’s brilliant that it can be both sweet and savory. Don’t believe me? Let me present some extra rice recipes for your enjoyment:

• Red beans and rice
• Lemon Rice Pudding
• Lentils, rice, and red onion salad

That’s why I asked the readers of this blog to share their cooking tips.

And that’s why I am sharing them with you.

Cooking tips for the Almost Vegetarian

• Try new things!
• Cook for how you feel
• Infuse olive oil with herbs yourself, much cheaper that way
• For a pretty golden pie crust, brush a little bit of cream on the top and sprinkle with sugar before you put it in the oven.
• My best tip is to have everything chopped up in advance before you start cooking. That way, you can just grab things and go! It takes an investment of time in the beginning, but saves it in the long run.
• Use the freshest ingredients. Though I make ample use of my freezer, buying fresh produce or other ingredients and cooking them within hours really helps flavor and texture.
• Taste as you go!
• Simple can be fancy, too!  Don’t try to do big complicated stuff that you can’t handle – but feel free to make the best of what you can handle!
• Real butter for baking.  Yeah.
• Take your time.

Oh, and it’s easy. My favorite type of recipe.

Roasted Garlic
There are a lot of ways to roast garlic this one is from Govind Armstrong’s cookbook, Small Bites Big Nights. Feel free to make a larger amount if you like; I always do.

3 cloves garlic
Extra-virgin olive oil

Place garlic in a small skillet and add enough oil to cover. Place over medium heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, and continue cooking until golden and soft, about 15 minutes total.

So now what?
Well, Smear this on slices of baguette. Drizzle it on roasted broccoli. Mash it into some mashed potatoes. In other words, use it anywhere you want that wonderful garlic taste.

Can’t get enough garlic
No worries. I’ve got some gorgeous recipes for you.

• Twice-Baked Garlic Soufflés
• Gigantes beans in tomato sauce
• Totally vegetarian non-recipe, recipe

No, of course, how could you? I mean, the thing is huge. So what I do is I use it like an encyclopedia. Want some tofu ideas? Head over to the tofu section and flip. Interested in asparagus? More flipping. Mushrooms? Flip, flip.

And that’s how I tripped across this recipe.

It’s light. It’s fast. It’s tasty.

Oh yes. It’s also vegetarian.

Vegetarian recipe for Shaved Artichoke Salad
From How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman

2 lemons
8 baby artichokes, trimmed
Parmesan cheese
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
Chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley or fresh basil leaves, for garnish

Squeeze juice from 1 lemon into a large bowl of ice water. Slice artichoke hearts and bottoms, if tender enough, as thinly as possible, adding them to the ice water as you slice.

Thinly slice Parmesan so that you have about as many slices of cheese as you do artichoke slices. Zest and juice remaining lemon; set aside.

Remove artichoke slices from water and pat dry. Toss with olive oil and juice from remaining lemon; season with salt and pepper. Layer artichoke slices on a platter with Parmesan; season with salt and pepper. Garnish with reserved lemon zest and herbs; serve immediately.

If you like light vegetarian recipes (and who doesn’t?), then here are three more good ones:

• Orange and Onion Salad with Cumin Vinaigrette
• Sauteed Buttery Peas with Mint and Feta Cheese
• Panzanella

See, the main ingredient is peas. In the spring, when there are sweet peas all but spilling out of stalls at your farmer’s market, grab armloads and use those. The rest of the year, when the peas at Safeway are merely an anemic shadow of the fresh version – assuming you can even find any – use frozen. Because, luckily, frozen peas are almost as good as the fresh thing.

Then, give yourself, oh, three minutes to whip this up. And another five to enjoy it!

Vegetarian recipe for Cheesy Peas
This recipe is from Cook with Jamie by the very adorable Jamie Oliver

Coarse salt
1 pound peas, fresh or frozen
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
Freshly ground white pepper
Chopped fresh mint leaves, for garnish

Bring a small saucepan filled with water to a boil, add salt and return to a boil. Add peas and cook until tender, about 2 minutes. Drain, reserving 4 tablespoons cooking water.

Return peas to saucepan with reserved water and place over medium heat. Add butter and stir until combined. Add cheese and continue to stir until butter and cheese have melted and evenly coat peas. Add more of the reserved cooking water if necessary.

Season peas with lemon juice and white pepper. Garnish with mint and serve immediately.

Now, we’re a big fan of peas. So, if you are, too, here’s some more amazing vegetarian pea recipes:

• Minted Pea Soup with Yogurt
• Asparagus with Shiitakes, Bowtie Pasta and Spring Peas
• Spring pea salad with minted cream

It’s healthy, of course, and delicious, and best of all (over the holidays, this is best of all!) fast.

And it would look so pretty next to a heaping plate of tofurky (if that’s your holiday thing)!

Who knew smart and funny Bill Maher could cook?

Vegetarian recipe: Bill Maher’s Savory Broccolini with Garlic
Makes 6 servings

3 bunches broccolini
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 salt, to taste

Trim broccolini ends. In a large pot of boiling water, steam until tender-crisp. Set aside.

Heat oil in a sauté pan over medium heat. Add garlic and crushed red pepper. Sauté until garlic is browned. Add broccolini to the pan and toss to coat with the garlic/red pepper mixture and heat through, around 2 to 3 minutes. Season to taste with black pepper and salt.

More, more, and more
Yep, got some extra vegetarian broccoli recipes to share because, hey, you can never have enough:

• Broccoli and Cheddar Skillet Flan
• Pasta Primavera
• Creamy Broccoli Soup

And when that happens. I make lemonade.But not just any lemonade. Oh no! I make raspberry lemonade.

And not just raspberry lemonade. I also made it with a special lemon curl I learned from a waiter who told me he summered on the coast and wintered in Arizona.

And I’m gonna teach you how to do both (not the summer / winter part; just the raspberry lemonade / lemon part).

And here’s the great news: You can make this recipe with frozen berries!

Recipe for Raspberry Lemonade
First, defrost your raspberries. (Forgot to defrost them first? No worries, put them into your colander and run some cool water over them until they are defrosted. It happens.)

Step one: Simple syrup
Before you make the lemonade, you have to make a simple syrup. What is a simple syrup? A liquid sweetener you can use in any liquid where you want the sweetness of sugar without the grit, such as in cold drinks (ice tea, lemonade, etc.) where granulated sugar has no hope of dissolving.

To make the simple syrup for my lemonade, I mixed 1 cup granulated white sugar and 1/2 cup water (you can make any amount you like as long as you keep the ratio one part water : two parts sugar) in a small saucepan. I placed the saucepan over a medium heat for five minutes, stirring periodically to dissolve the sugar. Then, once the sugar was completely dissolved, I instantly poured the syrup into a glass mason jar. (Ideally, you would clean your pot right away otherwise, as it cools, any leftover syrup in your pot will harden and be impossible to remove. However, if you forget and your syrup does harden, just fill your pot with hot water and give it a few minutes to liquefy your syrup yet again.)

Step two: Lemonade
I had about ten lemons on hand, so I squeezed them all into a strainer set over a bowl. The reason I squeezed them into a strainer was I wanted to catch any errant pulp and seeds that squeezed out with the juice. Discard pulp and seeds.

Step three: Raspberries
Put your defrosted frozen raspberries (I used more than half the bag) into a strainer set over a bowl. Then mash the raspberries against the side of the strainer with a wooden mixing spoon until you have mashed most of the juice out of the raspberry pulp (you’ll never get it all; don’t drive yourself nuts trying).

Step four: Mix and taste
Add about half your simple syrup and raspberry juice to your lemon juice. Add a splash of water (about a cup). Stir. Taste. Add more syrup and raspberry juice and water, as needed. I used about three-quarters of my syrup (my husband poured the rest right into his glass of lemonade; the man has a sweet tooth) and all my raspberry juice (I like the color). But you add as much or as little as your taste buds dictate.

Serve over ice. With a curl of lemon. Oh dear, you don’t know how to make the lemon? No worries, because I’ll teach you!

How to make a perfectly spiraled lemon strip as told to me by a very sweet, very talkative waiter
First, he cut off the pointy ends of a lemon. Then he sliced one side of the lemon open, from one end to the next, and scooped out the lemon part, leaving just a rectangle of peel behind.

Then he curled that rectangle as tightly was he could, secured it with a toothpick or two, and left it overnight.

The next day, he chiffonaide that peel into half inch strips that were perfect spirals.

See, it feels like summer hasn’t gone at all, doesn’t it? (Well, if you have to crank up the heat make that more real, then go ahead!)

Another drink recipe!
This one is for a hot drink (okay, it is chilly out there), perfect for flu season:

• Warm, lemony drink to sooth an aching throat

And the most perfect bread is garlic bread.

The problem is, I don’t want to use all that butter (yes, it is yummy, but it is also killer fattening). The solution? Roasted garlic. I have a recipe for it. And, good news, it is crazy easy!

The crazy thing is I had never made roasted garlic before I went to culinary school. I read about it, sure, but never made it.

This was one of the best parts of culinary school – getting to play with food!

Vegetarian recipe for roasted garlic
Peel as many garlic cloves as you like (alternatively, simply cut the top of a bulb, maybe a third of an inch down or so, to expose the garlic cloves). Toss with a tablespoon or two of olive oil. Put in a pan (I used a pie tin) and pop into a hot oven until they are soft (it took me nearly half an hour at 350 f).

Simply squeeze the garlic onto bread for the world’s most satisfying garlic bread (oh, I also add a good pinch of sea salt).

But don’t stop there. You can use roasted garlic all sorts of places. Such as squeezed on top of roasted vegetables for instant flavor.

And, bonus, you won’t have to worry about any pesky vampire action. At least for a while!

Recipes and recipes and recipes galore
You (or maybe just some of you) have asked me to post more vegetarian recipes. So what I’m doing is posting recipes AND, at the end of each recipe, posting links to even more recipes.

Sort of like a grand slam. Or something (sports analogies and me is never a good combination!).

Anyway, let me know if you like this idea.

So … back to garlic recipes.

Vegetarian garlic recipes
Here are three recipes that use a bit of garlic. They are all quite nice, but for the ones that use less garlic, I tend to add more garlic than is called for (One clove? One? Bah! I fearlessly double or triple or even quadruple that, depending on my mood. And if there will be kissing. Kissing and garlic, maybe not such a good combination!). Let me know what you think:

• Jacques Pépin’s Garlicky Cherry Tomato and Bread Gratin
• Vegetarian recipe from Eric Ripert: Tomatoes Provençal
• Roasted Peppers and Tomatoes Baked with Herbs and Capers