Word of the Day: Fare la scarpetta

Fare la scarpetta is one of those awesome Italian sayings that doesn’t really have an identical phrase in English.
With fare, meaning ‘to do’, and scarpetta, meaning ‘a small shoe,’  we get, ‘to do the small shoe.’ What does this all mean you ask?!!

When you are done eating a dish that is made in some sort of sauce, you grab a piece of bread, and you fai la scarpetta. That is, you drag a piece of bread in the leftover sauce, oil, or condiment, that is on your plate: you sop up what’s left. Isn’t that so clever of Italian!? It’s like dragging your bread-shoe over the plate, picking up all that’s leftover. Or in English, ‘licking your plate clean,’ but using a piece of bread to ‘clean’ the plate.

Don’t forget to conjugate fare according to person!