Have a friend standing by to help you create these tasty tortillas. Photograph: Jill Mead for The Guardian  There are times when having extra hands in the kitchen is a great help: with rolling and baking flatbreads the time whizzes by if you can get someone to share the work with you. I've made these tortillas very small by UK standards, much more like the size you get in good Mexican restaurants, which for me is the best and arguably the easiest to handle. Make the dough ahead, then one of you can roll the dough while the other does the baking.  Makes about 30 small tortillas400g plain flour50g wholemeal or spelt flour2 tsp salt100g cornmeal or polenta75g lard or butter250-300ml lager or pale beerExtra flour for rolling  1 Put the flours, salt and cornmeal in a bowl, and rub in the lard or butter.  2 Pour in the lager and mix to a soft dough. The more beer you add (up to 300ml) the softer and stickier the dough will be, helping the tortillas puff better when baked. Cover and leave for 2-4 hours at room temperature.  3 Divide the dough into 30 pieces and shape into balls. Place a flat griddle or nonstick, heavy-based frying pan on a high heat.  4 Ideally have another person help you: one of you should pat the dough out flat, using lots of flour to stop it sticking, then roll the dough out to about 15cm in diameter.  5 Then the other person should place the dough in the pan and flip it once it starts to puff and blister. This should take no more than 10-15 seconds, ideally, so crank the heat up on the first few until the bubbles start appearing quickly. Then flip the dough over and cook the other side. If it burns very slightly underneath in patches, that's good.  6 Keep the cooked tortillas stacked on top of each other on a plate and covered with a cloth. Either eat in the next few hours with the spiced beef (below) or place in a ziplock bag and freeze for another day.  Incredibly easy to make – just get it in the pot with a lid and bake it – and hugely flavoursome. Great served with tortillas, tomato salsa and guacamole. It works best with cheaper cuts of meat where – sorry to get into the gory details – the meat is held together in sections by connective tissue or cartilage, as these break down in long cooking and help the sauce become extra delicious. So look for cuts such as shin of beef or ox cheek, which look a bit gristly, rather than casserole steak.  Serves 4-6 3 medium onions, roughly sliced1.5kg beef shin, thickly sliced  For the spice mix4 tsp ground cumin4 tsp smoked sweet paprika1-2 tsp chilli powder½ tsp cinnamon1 tsp cocoa  To finish1 tsp each plain flour and salt2 tsp brown sugar  1 Place the onions in the bottom of a lidded ovenproof pot. Place the beef on top of the onions, then stir together the spice mix and sprinkle half over the meat. Put the lid on the pot and bake at 170C/150C fan/335F/gas mark 3 for about 2 hours or until the meat begins to feel tender when prodded with a fork.  2 Stir the remaining spice with the flour, salt and sugar. Remove the pot from the oven, take the lid off and sprinkle the remaining dry mix over the ingredients, then toss everything carefully together.  3 Replace the lid and return the meat to the oven for another 30 minutes until thickened and utterly tender before serving. You can thin the sauce slightly at the end with boiling water if necessary, but keep it thick and close to the meat.
Step-by-step baking: With an extra pair of hands to help with the rolling, these tasty tortillas can quickly be filled with spicy beef and on the table