素什锦是江浙一带过年必做的小菜，“什锦”是指菜的种类多、味道全，更寓意生活的五彩缤纷花团锦簇，讨个口彩。

　　南京人历来有烧素什锦的习俗，今天不少饭店都有现成的卖，小夫妻不会费那么多事，一件一件地买来，择好洗净，只到超市便可称到现成的熟什锦了。但城南有老人的家庭依旧在炒，且十分讲究，什么荠菜、黄豆芽、藕、针菇、金针、木耳、芹菜、菠菜、胡萝卜丝……有十几种之多，炒是一样一样地炒，然后汇总搅拌。黄豆芽像“如意”，“荠菜”与“聚财”谐音，所以是必不可少的。

　　This is an ordinary dish prepared as a must for the Spring Festival in Jiangsu province and Zhejiang province. As its name implies, it refers to a wide variety of vegetables in different tastes while further standing for colorful life as an auspicious remark.

　　Cooking assorted vegetable dish has always been a custom for people in Nanjing. Nowadays, ready-made assorted vegetable dish is sold in quite many restaurants. Young couples would not take that much trouble to buy one kind vegetable after another, sort out and wash them clean, since the cooked assorted vegetable dish is available in the super-market. However, families with elders in southern Nanjing still fry these vegetables with particular care. There are as many as over ten kinds of vegetables, such as shepherd's purses, soy-bean sprouts, lotus-roots, needle-like mushrooms, day-lilies, Jew's ears, celeries, spinaches and carrot-slices, etc. Each one is fried individually before all of them are mixed together. Soy-bean sprouts look like ‘Ruyi’ (symbolizing good luck) while shepherd's purses sound like‘Jucai’ (accumulating wealth), hence making them indispensable among all ingredients.

　　曹建新 译