Tilapia Tacos With Anise Seed

Anise seed livens up Jeffrey's one-pan tilapia tacos with mole sauce.

Tilapia Tacos With Anise Seed I'm Jeffrey Saad. Anise seeds should be in your spice rack because almost anywhere you're going to use citrus; you're going to love the taste of anise seed. Anise Seed is a small seed. But don’t let that fool you because it delivers huge flavor that’s in all the baked Mediterranean pastries and that liquors flavor that you love in the course. This is a stuff that is in the family of spices that makes you lick your lips when you eat salami. Anise seed is a spice you’re going to grab when you don’t have much time and you want huge flavor, texture and taste. One of my favorite ways to use anise seed is with fish especially something a simple as fish tacos. It makes a perfect week night meal. So we're going to be making one pan tilapia fish tacos with a five minute mole sauce. First thing we are going to do, get the pan hot, a couple table spoons of olive oil. We have tilapia, we’re going to season it with salt in both sides and then our anise seed. And be generous with this anise seed. It’s not only going to act as the flavor but also as breading. Okay. Now that we have that coated, it’s going in the pan. What I love about anise seed is it’s got so many uses. You could use this in some of your favorite salsas. You can make it into a mayonnaise. Think of it as any where you use citrus like lemon zest—you could use anise seed. I'm going to check these. It’s nice, golden and toasted. That’s perfect. If you take it too far, it will go from sweet and bright to almost bitter. I'm going to show you a trick. How do you know when the fish is done? You just stick the spatula underneath it about halfway under. If it breaks, it says, “I'm done. I can't take it anymore.” These are ready. We're going to take those out. Now what we are going to do, we're going to use this same pan or one pan tilapia tacos to create the mole sauce. We're going to add half an onion sliced, two garlic gloves whole. Why are they whole? Because if they we're chopped, the garlic would quickly burn and then two whole raw tomatoes. By leaving them whole, the moisture is not going to come out to make it boil. While the tomatoes are roasting the onions, we're going to heat up our corn tortillas. It just takes a second. This is getting nice and black and like we want it so now it is time to add our almonds, a little bit of cumin seed—just a tea spoon. Deglaze with a little bit of water. We're going to add our chilli paste, half a cup. There are many different kinds of mole. You're probably familiar with the one that has a chocolatey background. This mole has more of a smoky flavored profile. Normally, you’d have herbs, you have nuts, you have spices, and you have multiple steps. Anise seed has allowed us to convince all of that down and it is going to be just as tasty. It’s ready to blend. We're going to add our quarter cup of raisins, couple tea spoons of salt and now my favorite little secret trick is half of tortilla. We're adding a little bit of corn flavor to that mole sauce and it is also going to act as little bit of the thickener. It’s time to build these tacos. So the first thing we are going to do is take our chard tortillas, put them back to back. We're going to take our fish and pile that into the tortillas and we're right on the money there. Put on our mole sauce, some nice spurge lettuce that needs a little salty finish and that’s what tortilla is perfect for, dry cow’s milk cheese, salty. It has this great tang that just bounces with the rich mole sauce and the anise seed. And there you have it—time to take a bite. You’ll get this crunch with the anise seed that I'm getting this rush of the dried chilies and the dried fruit. This is why you want anise seed in your cabinet—huge flavor and texture with almost no effort. Enjoy.