Whatever weather happens to be raging as you read this, we’ve had a modicum of sunshine and are now officially seeking opportunities to drink rosé all day, as they say. Pop it on ice, hand out the glasses – we’re here for a long time, not necessarily a good time (things are gonna get headachey).
All this has precious little to do with snacking because we tend not to snack as we go in this country; we’re more about panic-smashing a Mcdonald’s when we’re up to our necks in it. And I’m not suggesting the snack I’m serving today might replace your Mcdonald’s; just that in Spain, like in lots of other delicious cultures where they care about you, you get to nibble sparkling snackettes while you drink. I was in northern Spain last summer when I encountered gilda in huge numbers, piled high on silver platters at bars where glasses of rosado cost £1.50. Gilda is a classic ’lil pintxo on a cocktail stick (pintxo is Basque for pincho, which is Spanish for spike), made up of olives, anchovies and pickled chillies. And it took me a few days to give gilda a go because I was taken in by bigger, oozier pintxos containing garlic mushrooms, ham and hot potatoes.
But once I started on those little spikes, I didn’t stop. A gilda is spicy, salty and acidic all at once – a frenzy of flavour that takes up such a small amount of space in the world. To make a pile of them at home to enjoy when you’re merely reading Grazia in the garden is to turn a moment into a summery event. You’ll need to play with the ingredients to find your ideal combo – I, for instance, found the Brindisa guindilla chillies too hot to pop whole, but I wasn’t averse to an occasional cornichon or pickled silverskin onion.
If we really want to get this right though, what should we drink? I asked wine writer, sommelier and Spain-lover Laura Jane Faulds. She told me that dry sherry and gilda is a ‘classic for a reason’ and she would go for a floral Manzanilla ‘for a more intense, aromatic coalescence’ – try Hidalgo La Gitana (£8 from Sainsbury’s). White-wise, Laura says we want a greener, oakless and mineral-driven white Rioja such as Marco Abella’s Olbieta (£13.95, dorsetwine.co.uk). She says this would work in an ‘ooh-la-la I’m sitting outside in the Spanish sunshine getting white wine drunk and munching mindlessly’ way.
Her dream gilda pairing, though, isn’t Spanish, it is a punchy, tannic Calabrian rosato (‘we need oomph to keep our wine from getting completely trampled on’). Cirò (£9.75, qwines.co.uk) is made from the hardy, thick-skinned Gaglioppo grape and therefore ‘its tart redcurrant and cranberry flavours are game for a sparring match with la gilda’s acid-mania’ Are you?
Perfectly Piquant Pintxo
Ingredients
Fat green olives without stones
Pickled guindilla chillies in a jar
Anchovy fillets in olive oil
Cocktail sticks
Method
Thread all three items on to your stick. You’ll need to fold the chilli and anchovy in half. You might want an extra olive. Why not.