The One to One Hotel’s new restaurant, Sennara, provided this wonderful Lebanese-inspired recipe for all the seafood lovers out there.

Chef Fouad Bou Zeid said, “In Lebanon the fish is generally wrapped in newspapers and oven baked, yet steaming. The hammour is a variation of that cooking method that also preserves shape, juices and flavour. The addition of the Provencal sauce gives off a wonderful aroma and taste, as the coupling of lemon, coriander and garlic will mesh well with the hammour, complementing its silkiness.”

Ingredients:

• Two pieces of baby hammour
• 30g butter
• 5g garlic
• 60g lemon juice
• One whole lemon
• 5g white pepper
• 5g coriander
• One piece Arabic bread, fried
• 5g salt

Method:

1. Clean the hammour properly
2. Steam the whole fish for 15-20 minutes until cooked and set aside
3. Arrange in a plate and put the fried Arabic bread on the plate
4. Pour Provencal sauce on top of the hammour, garnish with lemon and serve

Provencal sauce:

1. In a pan sauté garlic and coriander with butter
2. Add white pepper and lemon juice and mix together
3. Add salt to taste

Check out our Tried and Tested review of this recipe below. We opted to use the more sustainable Kingfish for this recipe.

We've always been great fans of seafood so when we received this recipe from Chef Fouad Bou Zeid from the new seafood restaurant Sennara at The One to One Hotel, we were excited.

However a little bit of our enthusiasm did settle a bit when we realized we were to steam whole fish (head and all) for the recipe. It's not that we don't like seafood, we love it actually, it's just we don't fancy having a pair of eyes staring up at us as we eat away. So with a slight adjustment to the cooking process, we settled for steaming de-boned fillets instead.

This recipe was the perfect reason for us to head down to the fish market and so off we went. We were quite settled on picking up some hammour (as the recipe called) however when we saw a gleaming kingfish up for sale we couldn't resist. After we'd gotten it cleaned and gutted down to non-threatening, eyeball-free fillets we were ready.

To steam the fish we simply placed a couple of inches of boiling water in a pan and used a slotted colander that fit inside the pan on which we placed our fillets. We covered the pan and let it go for around 8 to 9 minutes to cook it all the way through. Keep checking on your fish periodically since overcooking could definitely spoil your dinner.

The sauce was a breeze to make and smelled deliciously lemony and buttery all at once. Once our fish was cooked we quickly plated it up and drizzled a very generous amount of provencal sauce on top. The fish was nice, well cooked and firm but a bit boring to be completely honest. The sauce however, was the real star of this dish as it was filled with flavour and smelled as nice as it tasted.

We give it three out of five spoons!