The best of late summer and early fall vegetables - eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash and sweet bell pepper - tossed with an olive oil, vinegar and herb-based dressing, diced tomatoes, garlic, chunks of red onion and sliced smoked sausage, then baked.

Ratatouille and Sausage Bake

I can't even begin to tell you how much I love a vegetable dish like this. The Cajun?

Not so much.

So, when I cook something like this it's all for me!

Southern Style Skillet Ratatouille - a simple stew of diced vegetables, made with bacon drippings, the Trinity of Southern Cooking, zucchini and summer squash, tomato, eggplant, okra and fresh herbs.

Southern Style Skillet Ratatouille

Most folks these days seem to associate ratatouille with the Disney movie of the same name, and many may only know it from that. It actually is a real Mediterranean dish, most closely associated with France and said to have originated in Nice. The word perhaps comes from "touiller" and translates to mean something akin to "toss or stir."

Traditionally ratatouille is simply zucchini and tomatoes, with peppers, garlic and onion, sometimes sliced, sometimes cut into chunks. Somewhere along the way, eggplant was included, and though it wasn't always a part of the traditional dish, it's pretty much expected these days. I decided to make it with a dice of a variety of summer vegetables that we love in the south.

Eggplant Josephine, a popular dish at the old White Pillars restaurant, made from slices of eggplant, dredged in breadcrumbs and fried, topped with crabmeat, marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese, then baked.

Eggplant Josephine

Eggplant Josephine, sort of a Deep South coastal seafood take on Eggplant Parmesan, was a pretty famous dish when I was growing up. It was a signature dish at the White Pillars, a very popular local restaurant owned by the Mladinich family of Biloxi. Housed in an old 1919 white mansion located at the foot of Rodenburg Avenue right on the beach at Highway 90, owned originally by Dr. and Mrs. H. M. Folkes, and then called Gunston Hall, the restaurant was a beautiful and elegant structure.

Photo Credit

Seafood and Eggplant Dressing, a breaded seafood dressing, sometimes referred to as a casserole, made with fresh shrimp, crabmeat and eggplant.

Seafood and Eggplant Dressing

I was introduced to eggplant by my first mother-in-law. Eggplant was something that I do not ever recall my mother preparing, in any form, not one single time ... but my mother-in-law did cook it, and often. One of the ways she often made it, was in a wonderful seafood dressing.