Gilda Salsa

It’s That Simple is our series about recipes so easy, you can make them with your eyes closed. Think tiny ingredient lists, laid-back techniques, and results so delicious, you’ll text home about them.

A Gilda pintxo is the cocktail snack. If you’ve never had the pleasure, it consists of a pickled pepper, meaty anchovy, and green olive, all arranged on a toothpick. It’s a punchy bite that has something to say. So it’s no surprise that repurposing these ingredients into a salsa yields a knockout no-cook sauce.

You may have noticed Gildas popping up on restaurant menus and social media feeds of late, but they’ve been beloved in bars in the Basque region of Spain since the 1940s. Pinxto—translating to “spike”—is a little bite on a skewer. This version hails from Bar Casa Vallés in San Sebastián, and was actually named after Rita Hayworth’s character in the 1946 noir film Gilda. Her character, much like this snack, was sassy and a little spicy.

Traditionally, Gildas are prepared with guindilla or piparra peppers, manzanilla olives, and Cantabrian anchovies marinated in peppery olive oil—all worth seeking out if you can find them. But you can also swap in pickled peperoncini, any green olives (I like the mellow salinity of Castelvetranos), and any oil-packed anchovies. To transform this into a spoonable salsa, I add lots of olive oil and some of that pickled pepper brine, plus parsley, garlic, and red pepper flakes.

Drape this over any proteins: white fish like branzino or red snapper; grilled or pan-seared chicken, pork, or steak; a tin of sardines; jammy boiled eggs. I’ve doused it over vegetables like blanched green beans, tomato slabs, and crunchy salads. You can serve it as a dip with a crusty hunk of bread or bag of potato chips. The test kitchen even loved it on spaghetti.