Ushi No Tane Forum

I won with 3.5 star dishes for entree and dessert. What you need is just an ingredient that is 4 stars or more, the other ingredient does not matter. My entree was an Egg Rice = Egg + Cooked Rice, while my dessert was Pudding = Egg + Milk. Since my first chicken was producing 4 star eggs, it didn't matter if the cooked rice was only 2 stars or the milk was only 2.5 stars (giving me both 3.5 average dishes). I think it also helped that I had leveled my cooking rank to quite a substantial rank at "Cook". Even though I reloaded my game 10 times for both the entree and dessert festivals, I won on all reloads.

I think quality of dish and quality of ingredients do not matter too much, as long as you have a substantial cooking rank and super fresh ingredients to compensate for that.