The judging will be based on five things. Taste, appearance, value, originality, and difficulty. We have four judges with different tastes and cooking styles, so that different dishes will get different kinds of recognition and points. In your example of a flan vs a casserole for example, one might prefer the taste and look of a flan, but find them difficult to make. The scores would reflect that. Meanwhile another judge might enjoy cooking such dishes, and score it easy to make, and well tasting, but find the casserole more original (since there are many many variations on a casserole.) That's why its good to have judges with different tastes and cooking styles. If all of the judges liked steak and potatoes it wouldn't be fair to someone submitting anything other than that. It's really based on personal preference for some dishes, but we will also assign points for how well the recipe is objectively before adding in personal preference. I don't like onion for example, but I understand they have their place in cooking, especially in dishes like stews where they influence the flavor a good bit. If I were to see onion in a stew recipe, no points would be removed based on taste because I know it's a good ingredient to have in a stew.

The goal of the competition is to just have fun making recipes. If you like to cook, just make a dinner you would make anyways, jot down a recipe (adding things like salt and pepper to taste is perfectly acceptable, because this is how most people cook), take a pic and send it in. The judges then have fun trying new dishes and expanding their tastes.