Egg yolk ravioli is a piece of theater with a thirty-second window for disaster. The yolk lives inside a nest of ricotta inside a pasta dome, and if the pasta is too thin the yolk cooks on contact with boiling water, and if it's too thick you've made a dumpling, and if the water is too hot the yolk scrambles before the pasta sets. Ayaka Guido, executive chef at Jean-Georges Vongerichten's ABC Kitchen in New York, has apparently solved every one of these problems.
Guido rolls her pasta to setting 6 on a KitchenAid attachment — thin enough to see light through, thick enough to hold a full yolk through a 2-minute, 45-second cook in water that has come down from a rolling boil to a steady simmer around 190°F. The ricotta nest is piped around the yolk and the second sheet is pressed from the outer edge inward, expelling air before sealing. One air pocket and the whole thing balloons and bursts.
ABC Kitchen is the rare Jean-Georges room where the food is quieter than the room, and better for it. Bobby's ravioli — this is not a rumor — did not survive the boil.