When you make Latin food, which type of pan(dering) should you use?

When you’re in the food-service industry like I am (see: Beefy Yakov’s Slaughterhouse and Used Plastic Tarp Emporium) there are a lot of government-mandated safety and sanitation regulations you must follow. This requires taking classes on proper food handling, followed by tests to prove you’re competent enough to provide the public with edibles that won’t leave them shitbarfing for a month. This training process tends to be a little on the lengthy side, but, thankfully, Yakov isn’t one to jeopardize profit-earning potential to satisfy another paranoid government regulatory department.

Instead of making his employees take all the normal food-safety courses, Yakov requires all new employees to watch a bunch of Food Network shows he recorded on his nephew’s Tivo. The list of shows looks quite daunting at first, but Yakov says it’s ok to fast forward through all of Rachel Ray’s excessive gesturing—that alone knocks a couple of hours off the overall time it takes to finish.

After you watch all the Food Network shows on the Tivo, Yakov comes in and says something like, “Right. So, you promise not to stick pecker in cow parts, right? Of course you won’t. Yakov doesn’t hire goddamned perverts. That’s why his brother still unemployed.” Yes, sometimes Yakov speaks in the third person.

Anyway, while I was completing Yakov’s training course, I caught up with all the controversy surrounding the most recent season of The Next Food Network Star. This shit all went down a while ago when the show first aired (you probably didn’t hear about it because the show is retard-pissing-his-pants dumb, and the only people that watch it are the people that have to watch it as part of their food-handler’s training) and revolved around a precocious and doughy contestant named Joshua Adam Garcia, or JAG, as he called himself.

Eventually, he was dismissed from the show—or quit the show, depending on who you ask—even though he was one of the finalists. The reason: he was a dirty fuckin’ liar. He said he was a marine, and he actually was, but he exaggerated the hell out of his rank and claimed he served in Afghanistan, which he didn’t. In fact, he was discharged for what the press has called a “hazing incident.” I don’t know what that means, but, based on JAG’s behavior on the show, I’m just going to assume it involved a rectum full of military-issue soap bars and a barrack full of marines pissed off that they had to watch JAG cram them up himself with a sheathed bayonet. Another one of JAG’s lies was that he finished culinary school. He never did—some bullshit like that, anyway, I’m not going to research this inane folderol.

So, with his head drooped in epicene disgrace, JAG walked out of the Food Network studio, losing the reality show contest to a curly haired broad hopelessly and irritatingly obsessed with Paris and all things French. Meh [Editor’s Note: “meh” is a word used to represent the sound one makes when he doesn’t care enough to use words to form complete sentences]. Life goes on, and nobody except bored trophy wives likely to buy Rachel Ray’s cookbooks and fantasize about Tyler Florence even knows anything so scandalous took place.

However, while watching the drama unfold like an origami swan made by an arthritic factory worker with a total of seven fingers, I noticed another controversy. (To be fair, it’s hardly a controversy, but if I said it was as boring as the rest of this crap, would you even continue reading?)

In one of the episodes near the finale, the three remaining contestants—JAG, the curly haired Francophile, and a blonde Yakov refers to as horseface—went on some radio show to see how well they would maintain composure under the pressure of being grilled [Editor’s Note: this terrible food joke was completely unintentional] by two zany DJs on live radio.

During JAG’s interview, the following exchange took place:

JAG: “I’m the one that’s going to bring out Latino Caribe cuisine to the world. It’s not really, uh, represented, you know, as much as I would like it to be, so … it’s either for two reasons: You can’t do it, or, you know, you’re not interested.”

Radio Show Host: “So you think that’s misrepresented on the Food Network?”

JAG: “Uh, you know, I don’t think it’s represented as much as it could be. Uh, you know, and I’m here to try and bring that out.”

Sweet disappointed Jewish mother of Judas! If there’s one thing network executives don’t want to be accused of it’s racial insensitivity/exclusion/misrepresentation/stereotyping/exploiting. Needless to say, the show’s judges—Food Network executives—were none to pleased with JAG’s comments and spent a good amount of time explaining how wrong he was and just how ethnically diverse the Food Network on-air personalities are.

Executive 1: “Goddamnit, JAG! We do so represent Latinos with our programs!”
Executive 2: “Yeah, we’re totally into all that racial stuff.”
JAG: “Come on, vatos. You know that no es verdad. Show me La Raza, or you can kiss my culo!”
Executive 1: “Look here, JAG, there’s enough ethnic diversity here to choke a goddamned Rainbow Coalition.”
Executive 2: “Goddamned right.”
JAG: “Que pasa?”
Executive 1: “Well, shit, Giada’s a hook-nosed Roman, Emeril’s half Bridge Troll, Paula Dean is inbred …”
Executive 2: “She’s right out of The Hills Have Eyes, really.
JAG: “Ay caramba!”
Executive 1: “Robert Irvine is a Brit, Sandra Lee is a WASP …”
JAG: “How is that ethnic in any way, cabron?”
Evecutive 2: “She’s a WASP robot built as an inside joke between a few African-American scientists.”
Executive 1: “Tyler Florence—or TyFlo, as the cool kids refer to him—is a Nephilim …”
JAG: “A what?”
Executive 2: “A hybrid being created during the sticky, unholy pelvic union of a fallen angel and a human woman, JAG.”
Executive 1: “Hell, I myself am a gay Jew, Mario Batali is a fat nerd, Cat Cora’s a hermaphrodite, Guy Fieri’s a time-traveling alien, Morimoto is some kind of Asian, Duff Goldman has been a chipmunk man since he got bitten by that radioactive chipmunk that escaped from Alton Brown’s dressing room, and Rachael Ray is, well, it’s better that you didn’t know the truth about her terrifying origins.”
Executive 2: “I wish I didn’t know. Yeesh!”
JAG: “But where (pauses to salsa dance) are all the Latinos?”
Exexutive 1: “Well, Bobby Flay is a Latino. I mean, technically he’s Irish or something, but he uses blue corn like a Mexican.”
Executive 2: “He loooooves blue corn, JAG.”
JAG: “That is not bueno enough. Bobby Flay may be my hero and the object of my secret homosexual fantasies, but he is not a Latino.”
Executive 2: “We stand by our previous claim that Latinos are well represented on our fine network. We appreciate your concerns, though.”
Executive 1: “Yeah, and you’re not getting eliminated from the show this round, so just keep your mouth shut, capice?”
JAG: “Arrrrriba!”

Several months later: