Restaurant review, La Vara: Thanks, Spanish Inquisition.

There was a time in Spain when pork was the law. The Spanish Inquisition ramped up in the 1400s to brutally enforce a Christian culture. So while Spain's Jewish and Muslim communities did not eat pork, they began cooking it as an angry gesture of assimilation, a fat middle finger to the Grand Inquisitor, who inspected even their kitchens for signs of deviance. With time, the gesture became a part of their culinary traditions. That's why you'll find a shining quarter of a piglet, its thin skin shattering under your fork, its sweet, buttery meat sliding off the shank bone, at a new Sephardi-Moorish spot in Cobble Hill. Alexandra Raij and her husband, Eder Montero, run two Manhattan tapas bars, Txikito and El Quinto Pino. But La Vara, which opened in late March, plays with the older, irresistible flavors established by Spain's forgotten cooks.

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