Pa Rum Pum Pum Yum

WHEN LEONETTA Merlino Batali baked her potent rum cake every Christmas, the grandchildren, Mario and Gina Batali, were not allowed to have any.

"We didn't get to eat it," says Gina, "because of all the rum." So, of course, the cake took on the allure of forbidden fruit. These days, Gina makes the cake herself, and its allure is more like nostalgia. This is a very homey-looking dessert, one that only a family member could love for its looks.

"My grandmother didn't do anything elaborate," Gina says, as if by way of apology for the cake's humble appearance. "She always kept everything pretty simple. But she did like to decorate the cake with red and green sprinkles. My dad still likes the sprinkles, but, personally, I can live without them."

Gina's dad is Armandino Batali, founder of the well-loved Seattle salumeria/deli known as Salumi, where Gina and her husband, Brian D'Amato, work side by side. (Brother Mario works in New York City running three-star restaurants, writing cookbooks and starring on the Food Network.) About a year ago, Gina resigned from her executive job with General Electric to become president of the family business.

"For me," says Gina, "this whole Salumi thing is not so much about the restaurant business as it is about my family. From the time I left for college until I moved back to the Northwest (in 2002), I only saw my family once a year. But we only get so many years, and I really wanted my daughters to know their grandparents."

Armandino worked for Boeing in corporate sales, and, when Mario and Gina were teens, the family lived in Europe. "Our holiday traditions had to adapt to wherever we were," Gina says. "I remember standing in the Plaza España in Madrid when the clock struck midnight on New Year's Eve." There, "everyone stands in the plaza with their bottle of champagne, and the tradition is to eat a grape with every stroke of the clock. So finally — unless you eat the grapes really fast — you have a mouthful of grapes and you swallow them with a mouthful of champagne and kiss the person you're with. I think the kissing part is universal."

Wherever they were, the family was together for the holidays, she says. "Boeing gave us 'home leave' every year and provided airplane tickets for the family to come together. No matter where we were, on Christmas Eve, Armandino always made cioppino, the seafood stew, and then we would go to midnight Mass. If we were in Seattle, Leonetta would make pizzelle cookies with the kids and bake her rum cake for the grown-ups." These days, Gina's mother, Marilyn, bakes cookies with her young granddaughters and Armandino still makes the cioppino.

Gazing tenderly around the salumeria, Gina mentions that Leonetta died about 10 years ago, before Salumi was even a gleam in Armandino's eye. But, she says with confidence, "if Leonetta had lived to see this place, she would be here every day. She would have loved it."

This time of year, she might even be offering grown-up visitors big slices of her rum cake.

Greg Atkinson is the author "Entertaining in the Northwest Style." He can be reached at greg@northwestessentials.com. Barry Wong is a Seattle-based freelance photographer. He can be reached at barrywongphoto@earthlink.net.