The Takeaway Secret is a book that I found through a thread on moneysavingexpert.com - there's a whole thread on this and practically everyone recommends it.

The author, Kenny McGovern, was diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder, followed by mild depression and agoraphobia, which meant that he was unable to go out and get his favourite sandwich from Subway. He decided to try to create the same sandwich at home but it never quite tasted the same. It took him a few weeks, but finally, after asking the advice of everyone he knew, he finally got his sandwich to taste the same as if he'd gone to Subway and bought it. Then he turned to recreating other takeaway food and so the book came about. It took him about five years to create all the recipes that are in the book.

So I tootled off to Amazon to buy it at the amazing price of £3.75 and when it arrived, I had a quick look through to see what recipes there are in there. It's split up into sections: burgers, kebabs, the chip shop, Indian main meals, Chinese main meals, pizza and pasta, sides salads and sauces, breakfast and lunch, and drinks and desserts.
Within each section, there are numerous recipes. As an example, in the Indian meals chapter, there's an initial recipe for the base curry sauce, which can they be frozen in portions and used as the base ingredient for the other meals in that section. Doing it this way means that each meal, once the base sauce is prepared, only takes ten minutes to make.

The recipes are written in plain English and are very easy to follow, although some recipes call for parts to be chilled in the fridge for a few hours or overnight, so it pays to read ahead before blindly starting a recipe. Following the recipe exactly usually works, although there are some little tweaks to be made, to adapt the meals to your specific taste.

The dishes that I have made from the book have turned out, on the whole, to be fantastic (although I made the mistake of not reading ahead and therefore didn't chill the rice for my egg fried rice, which turned it into a disaster!). The dishes I would recommend are the crispy chilli chicken, the bacon and egg McMuffins, the sausage and egg McMuffins (taste just like the real thing) and the cookies.

One recipe that everyone on MSE absolutely raves about is the lamb donner kebab. The book gives details of how to make the kebab, the sauces and even the pitta bread. People have bought this book just for this recipe and everyone does say that the lamb donner kebab is just the same as it is in the takeaway. As I don't like lamb, I'm unable to comment on the recipe, but if you like donner kebabs, apparently you'll love this.

The main thing about this book is that it tells you how to make meals that you would usually get from the takeaway. The difference here is that they're cheaper, more healthy and made at home.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to cook but finds themselves getting takeaway food more often than they'd like. And for £3.75, it's not expensive, although the price on Amazon does fluctuate, so if it's more expensive, wait until it's on at the lower price.