Eggplant with Eggplant Dressing

Because eggplants grow as thickly as tomatoes and peppers in Louisiana, recipes for eggplant (called “aubergine”) abound in Creole cook books. One Cajun method is to stuff the eggplant to resemble a stuffed pirogue, the bayou canoe. Another is to smother the eggplant in eggplant dressing, which is a mashed purée flavored with shellfish. When the dressing is served over slices of fried eggplant, as Alex Patout makes it, it is a main dish as richly complex as the Eggplant Parmigiana of the It