So after my last sushi experiment, I'd been thinking about some other things to try without going too crazy. I still had a decent bit of tuna and octopus left over and a free Sunday afternoon, so I decided it was time for my second excursion into mercilessly butchering the graceful art of sushi-making. 
I wanted to do more than just fish, rice, and seaweed this time, so I started off by julienning a little bit of purple sweet potato and boiling those pieces in lightly salted water for a few minutes. Since the pieces were so small, it didn't take long for them to cook. I drained the water and set the potato slices away.
On to step 2: I wanted to toast up some panko bread crumbs to give a little texture to my rolls. I just poured a bunch of crumbs into my pan with no other shit, kept it at a medium-low heat, and, get this: I actually was able to flip it without a utensil. Just that little dip-push-pull thing that fancy tv chefs do to flip shit over. I actually pulled it off without dropping a single fucking thing. It was a miracle, and I am totally bragging about this until the day I die. Once the crumbs were mostly toasted up, I dumped them into a bowl on the side, as well.
While the potato and crumbs were cooking, I went ahead and started prepping my tuna. I cut several long, thin slices for rolling and was left with an extra hunk, so I lunked that hunk into chunks.
I gave the chunks a light covering of monosodium glutamate (MSG), which seems to have a lot of people scared, but I'd rather die having enjoyed life, so I used it, and I do not regret it. Once they were salted, I seared (a little too much, unfortunately) the chunks in sesame oil.
Once they cooled, I sliced them as thinly as I could. The chunks that were a little more overdone didn't slice nearly as cleanly as the more properly seared ones, so I had to eat them so as not to shame myself and my lineage.
I also sliced up my last shiitake, and then it was off to the rolling. For the first roll, I layered far too much rice on my seaweed, then put a line of tuna topped with a line of shiitake slices. About halfway down, I also added a line of sweet potato.
This rolled very easily, but I did end up with extra rice smashed out along the seam that made everything afterward more difficult because it was stick as fuck. Still, I eventually got it sliced and removed from the cutting board to my plate.
My second roll was a bit more involved. I put out the rice (notice that it's not pressed out to all edges this time), then added a layer of toasted panko. For the filling, I alternated rows of tuna with a row of sweet potato and a row of shiitake.
This one was a little tougher to roll due to all of the shit in there, but it was, for the most part, much easier to slice and move to the plate. I say "for the most part" because one of the little bastards fell apart a bit, but, hell, 15/16 being in decent shape is pretty fucking good for me.
I kept my plating pretty simple as that seems to be the standard with sushi places. Notice that new plate, though? I'm so happy to have picked one up like that. Anyway, I lined the first roll up on the left standing up in rows, then drizzled some wasabi sauce and Japanese bbq sauce on there. The wasabi sauce was a little messy because I was impatient and sloppy. Kiss my ass. I leaned the second roll around the right side since it was a bit larger in diameter. I added a little tobiko to those after the fact, which had a pretty messy look; I should include them in the roll next time, I think. Anyway, a drizzle of the bbq sauce on that, and we were in business. I just added a few pieces of octopus nigiri because I love octopus and had some leftover rice. I also included the seared tuna in the back on either side of my pickled ginger.
Overall, it tasted great. The toasted panko was a definite plus for the texture, and the flavor of the sweet potato worked really well with the rice and fish. I do think I'm still adding a bit too much rice to my rolls, so I'll have to sort that out eventually. I'm now out of tuna and octopus, but I've still got a few servings of cuttlefish and plenty of tobiko and clam in my freezer that I'll need to use before too long. I may do some veggie rolls soon, too, just to get practice with portioning the rice, rolling, and lining up the filling.
Oh, and, as for the title, my rice cooker steamed its last on this batch of rice. I'm going to try to figure out if I can repair it. I mean, after all, I spent nearly $25 on this rice cooker in 2017, so I want to get my money's worth out of it. In the meantime, I'll just cook rice on the stove like a fucking peasant.
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