When we lived in Maine and Colorado we were lucky to have local farmers who raised geese and wanted to sell the eggs. We made all kinds of fun dishes with these giant eggs, from deviled to steamed to the goose egg raviolo. The raviolo was a monster, a giant yolk encased in sheets of fresh pasta. We served them with other signs of spring: morel mushrooms, fiddlehead ferns, grated Pecorino cheese and a brown butter balsamic sauce. When we made these ravioli, we would make them in batches and would actually freeze them. We could then cook the ravioli straight from the freezer. Yes, from frozen, the horror!
What was exciting about cooking the ravioli from frozen is that the yolk remained semi fluid. No, it did not gush, there was not a pool of yolk on the plate. Rather the yolk developed the fudge-like texture of hot spring eggs, cooked at 65-67 degrees Celsius. The structure of the yolk allowed the diner, often myself, to cut the raviolo and have tender, gooey yolk and soft, supple pasta accented with sauce and cheese in each delicious bite.
And then we moved on. We made new pastas, found different fillings, and lost our source for goose eggs. We forgot about that magical alchemy that occurred when we cooked the frozen yolks. That is until recently. Last week I had a bit of reflective time and the egg yolk raviolo popped into my head. What was challenging when we made the goose egg raviolo was separating the white from the yolk and making sure we did not pierce the delicate membrane holding the yolk together in the process. Then we would have to seal the slippery yellow disc in the dough without any air pockets or breakage. In retrospect, I realized that we should have frozen the yolks before making the ravioli. Interesting. Freeze the yolk first. Since I was thinking about freezing the yolks, naturally I began to wonder what else was possible? What if we took chicken egg yolks and seasoned them and then froze them for ravioli? And as long as we are seasoning the yolks, why not add additional flavors, like bacon and cheese?
I stopped asking questions and started work on the answers. I took egg yolks and seasoned them with salt, hot sauce, walnut oil, bacon bits and grated Parmesan. With this base made, I placed them in our small half sphere molds and froze them. When the flavored mini yolks were frozen I popped out half of them and spread them with soft butter and then stuck them to the yolks still in the mold. When the yolks were glued together I put them back in the freezer for the following day's pasta class.
We used these miniature flavored yolks as the filling for hand rolled miniature egg yolk ravioli. When the ravioli were cooked the blended mixture melted together for an egg yolk flavor burst.
*Pardon the blurry action/eating shot live from the class. Look closely and you can see the fluid flavored yolk filling.
