

Your genuine latke is a cake of grated potato and a little onion, bound with an egg and fried in oil.Fred's paternal side of the family is German and he suddenly had a hankering for these potato cakes his grandmother made him when he was a child.This should be eaten with Paputtu, made with broken rice rava, sprinkled with grated coconut and steamed into a flat cakes cut into diamond shapes.


To be in one’s element: Estar en su salsa (to be in one’s sauce) It’s a piece of cake: Es pan comido (it is eaten bread) To pull someone’s leg: Tomar el pelo (to take the hair) To cost an arm and a leg: costar un ojo de la cara (to cost an arm from the face) To push the boat out: tirar la casa por la ventana (to throw the house out of the window) Some are direct translations, like ‘ser la oveja negra de la familia’ (to be the black sheep of the family) or ‘romper el hielo’ (break the ice), and others are similar to ours: The sassy Columbian also sings ‘ no puedo pedir a los olmos que entreguen peras’ a play on the phrase ‘no pidas peras al olmo’ (don’t ask the elm tree for pears). In Tortura, my personal favourite, Shakira sings ‘a otro perro con ese hueso’ (to another dog with bone) which means “to go try that on someone else”. They’re so essential to Spanish communication that the most common way to say ‘give birth’ is ‘dar a luz’ (literally: give to light), but the real reason you should learn some is that they pop up in Shakira songs. Well bad news Spanish learners! These bizarre frasas hechas (idioms) are even more common in Spanish and it’s important to get a handle on them early. When foreign speakers of English hear these phrases in conversations which aren’t concerned with kidnapping pets or building a shed, they are probably a little confused. ‘He’s let the cat out of the bag’, ‘ she’s hit the nail on the head’ …
