To enter the contest, just go to Pastaville and submit your best recipe (or recipes). You can upload a couple pictures and a video as part of your submission to help make your recipe stand out. Once all submissions have been received, the top six recipes will be selected as finalists. They'll make the recipes, taste them, and judge them based on overall taste, visual appeal, and ease of preparation. First place will receive $10,000 while second and third place will receive $3,000 and $2,000, respectively.
If you need some inspiration, here's a simple recipe that I made the other day that uses only three or four ingredients.
I started with fresh fettuccine (or make your own with three large eggs and two cups (300 g) all-purpose flour), so I needed to get some water boiling. Put four quarts water in a pot and bring to a boil. Once boiling, dissolve 3 Tbs. table salt to the water.
Remove the 1 lb. of sausage from its casing by cutting open the casing and peeling it off. Cut up the sausages into 1/4-in. pieces and put in a pan with medium heat (no need for oil, we'll cook it in the flavorful fats found in the sausage). If your pan isn't very big, work in batches otherwise the sausage won't brown (if they are crowded together).
Break up the sausage as needed and allow to brown (about 4 minutes total).Remove the sausage from the pan and cook more sausage if you didn't cook all of it at once.
When all the sausage has been cooked, add 1 pound of baby spinach (also working in batches). Using tongs, move the spinach around so that all of it is just wilted. Remove the spinach and add more, continuing until all the spinach has been cooked.
Cook 1/4 pound of fresh pasta at a time for 2 minutes. Remove the pasta from the boiling water and place it in the pan along with 1/4 of the sausage and 1/4 of the cooked spinach. Toss and set aside on a plate for service. Continue until all the pasta has been cooked, mixed with toppings, and plated for service.