GILDAS

SOURCE: MARTI BUCKLEY. BASQUE COUNTRY: A CULINARY JOURNEY THROUGH A FOOD LOVER’S PARADISE.

Rita Hayworth zoomed to cultural consciousness and Hollywood bombshell status from the 1946 blockbuster film noir, Gilda, where she played the eponymous lead. To honor the screen icon who bore Spanish heritage, bartops in San Sebastián renamed one of their earliest banderillas after the fictional femme fatale. Gilda Farrell was salty as an anchovy fillet, feisty as Guindinilla chiles, and greenly risqué as Manzanilla olives, and a proper stacking of the trinity in a skewer captures her curves to make one seductive pintxo.

Ingredients

8 pickled Guindilla chiles

8 pitted green Manzanilla olives

4 anchovy fillets preserved in olive oil, preferably Cantabrian

Extra virgin olive oil for garnish

Specific Equipment

Small knife

4 long toothpicks or short bamboo skewers

Serves 4

Instructions

1. Slice off the stems from the chiles and cut each in half crosswise.

2. Prick one olive with a long toothpick or short bamboo skewer, piercing through its center. Prick the two pieces of chile over the Manzanilla. Thread in the anchovy fillet through the toothpick or skewer, making an S-shape. Pile in two more pieces of chile over the anchovy fillet. Finish the pointed end with another olive. Repeat the remaining ingredients and the pattern for the rest of the toothpicks and skewers.

3. Transfer the skewers on a serving platter and drizzle them over generously with olive oil.