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Oversize purses of fresh pasta are filled with milky ricotta dotted with basil speckles. Before they’re sealed, a raw egg yolk is nestled in the cheese. The whole thing is briefly poached before a quick toss in brown butter sauce followed by a dusting of savory, salty Parmesan cheese.
There is nothing quite like uova da raviolo, and in Miami, it’s an all-too-rare offering.
The delicate satchels can sometimes be found at the chichi Italian restaurant Cipriani‘s Miami outpost on the ground floor of Brickell’s Icon condominium. Proof Pizza & Pasta toyed with them shortly after opening but, like others, found the dish a time-consuming, risky endeavor.
See also: Proof, Midtown’s Casual New Spot, Offers a Fresh Take on Italian Cuisine
“We were going to do a butternut squash, sage, and amaretto raviolo,” says Proof’s chef and owner Justin Flit.
The dish must be used the day it’s made — a serious challenge for most restaurants. Even worse, any leftovers have to be tossed.
“You have a fresh egg inside, and you can’t freeze it,” says Scarpetta and Corsair chef and owner Scott Conant.
Most places that make fresh pasta, whether by hand or through an extruder, freeze portions to help the noodles hold up to a boil, Conant says.
But without the ability to prepare and freeze an adequate amount, most don’t want to risk prepping them à la minute or to lose money throwing them away.
“It didn’t make sense from an execution standpoint,” Flit says.
Both chefs say they were dismayed by being bested, if only temporarily, by the challenge.
Conant wistfully recalls the first days of his career. As a cook at New York City’s beloved but now-closed San Domenico, he made scaled-down raviolos that replaced chicken eggs with quail’s nickel-size yolks.
“I’ll get back to it at some point,” he says.
In the meantime, all that Miami diners can do is hungrily hope and wait.
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