It's hard to believe Ina Garten ever worked for the government, given her straightforward style. The Barefoot Contessa is not into complicating things.

Not food. And not life.

Over granola and berries at the Four Seasons in downtown Miami, Garten, in town to sign copies of her latest cookbook, Barefoot Contessa, Back to Basics (Clarkson Potter, $35), explains her down-to-earth approach to food:

``What interests me is flavor. How can I bring out the intrinsic flavor of what's already there? I would say the essential recipe in the new book is the roasted tomatoes. Usually you go to the grocery store and you buy tomatoes that taste like the cardboard box they came in. But you can very easily turn them into something delicious. Cut them in half, drizzle them with good olive oil and aged balsamic vinegar and slow roast them until the flavors are caramelized and concentrated.''

The woman known for laid-back but first-class entertaining centered on modern, unpretentious recipes (Back to Basics, on the New York Times bestsellers list, is her sixth cookbook), didn't slack when it came to teaching herself the tenets of classical cuisine.

Garten, a nuclear policy analyst under Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, would come home and study Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking like it was a college text. She wanted to have a solid base before she started her own experimenting.

''You can find a recipe for a really fast hollandaise sauce, but you have to make it right the first time so that you can understand how it works,'' says Garten, 60, looking relaxed in a black button-down shirt and black pants, her black shoulder-length hair framing a youthful, freckled complexion free of heavy makeup.

She first discovered cooking when she got married.

'When I was a kid my mother would say, `Get out of the kitchen, it's your job to study.' I guess I'm still acting out. When I first got married I thought, 'How cool that I can cook anything I want any time I want.' ''

A NEW DISH

And once she was clear that cooking was what she wanted to do most, she gave up the Washington gig, never imagining that the tiny shop she bought in West Hampton in 1978 on a lark, just to see if she could make a living out of her passion for the kitchen, would eventually lead to fame, fortune -- and a Food Network TV show.

''Looking back now, when you're in the White House, you really believe what the president believes. Sometimes it's harder to tell the truth to power,'' Garten says.

So, did she leave over differing philosophies?

``I left because I wanted to have fun. And that wasn't fun.''

Her husband Jeffrey, former dean of the Yale School of Management and still a professor there, took a drive out to West Hampton with her to check out a 400-square-foot food shop named the Barefoot Contessa, after the 1954 film starring Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner. Garten made an offer, and to her surprise, it was accepted.

'The kitchen was so small, the stove was in the store. I literally worked around the clock that first summer. On Wednesdays I would rent a station wagon and leave home at 3 in the morning to drive to New York to buy ingredients. Then I would drive back and restock the store. It was a 19- to 20-hour day. That first year I thought, `My God, this has to be the stupidest thing I ever did in my life.' ''

Garten had never managed employees, had never needed to bake 100 baguettes by morning.

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