What it's about
An elegant crooner steps into the kitchen and prepares a full dinner. He washes his hands, chops vegetables, makes soup, fries chicken, grates cheese, tastes the sauce, and sets the table. At the end, his friends arrive and dinner is served. It's like a sung recipe, in order.
Useful vocabulary
Utensils and places
- la tabla de madera: wooden cutting board
- el cuchillo afilado: sharp knife (a knife that cuts well)
- la olla: pot (tall container for boiling or making soup)
- la sartén: frying pan (flat container for frying; in almost the entire Spanish-speaking world it is feminine: la sartén)
- el tazón: bowl
- el horno: oven (where food is roasted or baked)
- la espátula: spatula (utensil for flipping food)
- la cocina: has two meanings. It is the room, the kitchen (entro a la cocina), and also the appliance with burners, the stove (enciendo la cocina).
- picar: to chop or mince into very small pieces (pico la cebolla)
- hervir: to boil, to heat a liquid until it bubbles
- remover / revolver: to stir with a spoon
- mezclar: to mix, to combine ingredients
- freír: to fry, to cook in oil
- rallar: to grate into small pieces with a grater (rallo queso)
- exprimir: to squeeze out the juice (exprimo un limón)
- probar: to taste, to eat a little to check the flavor
- dar la vuelta a algo: to flip or turn something over
- ponerse a + infinitivo: to start doing something (me pongo a cocinar)
- poner toda la carne en el asador: literally 'to put all the meat on the grill'; to make the maximum effort, to give it your all. Here it is a play on words, because he is also cooking.
- ¡Qué rica sensación!: expresses that something is delicious
- La cena está servida: dinner is served, the food is now on the table
- ¡Buen provecho!: enjoy your meal (said to someone who is about to eat)
Grammar
- Present indicative, first person, to narrate actions step by step: entro, pico, remuevo, enciendo, tomo, rallo, pruebo, coloco. Notice the stem-changing verbs: remover → remuevo, encender → enciendo, probar → pruebo.
- Reflexive verbs: me lavo las manos, me pongo a cocinar. With body parts, the definite article is used instead of the possessive: me lavo las manos (not mis manos).
- Object pronouns: la tabla la pongo frente a mí, al horno lo metemos. When the object comes at the beginning of the sentence, it is repeated with a pronoun. Le pongo aceite (a la sartén), le doy la vuelta al pollo.
- Para que + subjunctive: para que sepa bien (from saber, 'to taste').
- Simple future: será sensacional.
- Gerund: cortando por aquí, el humo va subiendo (ir + gerundio = an action that progresses little by little).
Watch out: poetic license in the song
Some phrases were chosen to rhyme. It's better not to copy them as they are:
- Hervir una gran olla: the normal way to say this is hervir agua or poner una olla a hervir.
- El humo va subiendo por toda la ciudad: this is a poetic exaggeration, not a real situation.
- Un poco de pimienta, de sal y de sabor: flavor is not an ingredient. You add salt and pepper para dar sabor (to give flavor).
- Cocinamos en la cocina: this is redundant. You simply say cocinamos.
- De forma muy casual: in Spanish, casual mainly means 'by chance'. For 'casual' or 'informal', it is better to say de forma sencilla or informal.
- Este gran local: a local is a bar, a restaurant, or a shop, not a house. Here it is used for the rhyme.
- Yo appears many times (yo pico, yo rallo, yo pruebo). In normal speech, the pronoun is omitted because the verb already indicates the person.