Brooke Williamson has worn many hats in the culinary world—Top Chef champion, Food Network titan, and the chef-owner behind Playa Provisions in Los Angeles. But before all of that, she was just a kid wandering through her mom’s backyard garden, waiting for the first mulberries of the season to ripen.
“I always knew what time of year it was based on the food we were eating,” she says. “The artichokes would start growing, the tangerines were almost ready—it was exciting to know what was coming next.”
That deep connection to seasonality and produce shaped her career in ways she didn’t fully realize until now. In her first cookbook, Sun-Kissed Cooking: Vegetables Front & Center, Williamson isn’t asking people to go vegetarian—she’s simply inviting them to see vegetables differently.
More Than a Side Dish
“I develop a dish in my head based around the vegetable, not the protein,” Williamson explains. “And I think that’s relatively unique.”
While most chefs build plates around a central protein, Williamson’s creative process starts with what’s fresh, what’s in season, and what excites her. It’s an approach rooted in her childhood, when she’d pick fruit from the garden to put in pancakes or anticipate which vegetables would appear on the dinner table.
That’s why Sun-Kissed Cooking isn’t a vegetarian cookbook—it’s a book about making vegetables the star in a way that feels organic, effortless, and exciting. Many of the recipes include meat, but as a supporting ingredient, not the focus. “Proteins in the book are used as flavor enhancers—to add umami, texture, or balance,” she says.
