Maazah’s Magic
The company’s mission is simple: to bring Mom’s beloved green sauce to everyone, everywhere
BY AMY REA
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Yasameen Sajady grew up as the daughter of Afghan immigrant parents who had a robust love for and talent with food. And a good thing, too. “When my parents came here in the 1970s, all of their siblings came too,” she said. “They have nine or 10 brothers and sisters. So I have 55 cousins. Every weekend would be a get-together, and it would be all about the cooking. Who brings the best rice? What are the sides? Where’s the naan coming from? How fresh is it going to be?”
Courtesy of Maazah Chutney
For weekly 70-person gatherings, the answers to those questions came in the form of potluck assignments. “My family doesn’t do anything small,” she said, laughing. “There’s no dinner party of 10. It’s everybody or nothing.” No one could take on that large of a meal, so everyone contributed, which in turn led to a familial, community love song to food. “It’s always been this thing in our minds that you share with other people,” she said. “You show how you care and nourish family, and you show love this way. It’s always been very welcoming.”
Introducing Minnesotans to Afghan Foods
The welcome extended to the people Sajady and her sister met in school. “I remember growing up with not a lot of people that looked like me living in my community or going to my school. But whenever they would come to our house, like a friend would come for a sleepover or dinner or something, we’d all sit around the table and they’d say, ‘Cool, your mom cooks?’ And that led to, ‘What is this food? Oh my God, this is the best thing I’ve ever eaten, what is this?’”
In that way, food provided a way to bridge the differences, and a cause for the Sajadys to celebrate their heritage while educating others. But even learning that non-Afghans responded enthusiastically to their mom’s home-cooked Afghan foods didn’t trigger the idea to consciously spread the good news. Instead, it took her mother Fatima making one slight change to the ever-present bowl of green chutney that was at table for every single meal.
“One day we were at my parents’ house for lunch, and she added fresh ginger to her chutney. Remember, this is a really big, loud family. But the only thing anybody was saying around the table was ‘Can you pass the chutney, Mom, this is so good, what’s in the chutney?’ Then a lightbulb went off, and I swear I hit my fist on the table and said, ‘This is it right here. We’ve got to bottle this.’”
Sajady’s sisters Sheilla and Nasreen may have initially given her some side eye, but they quickly got on board. They developed a plan to take the chutney to farmers markets to try it out, after going through the University of Minnesota Extension Services food and safety training.
Maazah is Born
Thus Maazah (pronounced mah-ZAH) was born in 2014. The name comes from an Afghan word that means flavor, and the green chutney produced under the Maazah label is exactly that, full of apple cider vinegar and lemon juice, ginger, garlic, sea salt, and plenty of cilantro. When Yasameen and her sisters Nasreen and Sheilla began sampling it at farmers markets, they found that most customers loved it. “They’d say, ‘I’ve never tried anything like this before,’” Sajady said. “And we could educate people, show them that that green sauce you get with your Indian takeout is like that. But here you can have it not just for takeout. Put it on your eggs. Put it on anything you want to taste better.” Her current favorite food to add chutney to is fish tacos.
By the end of 2022, demand had risen to the point that the Sajady sisters withdrew from the farmers markets. “We just launched in Kowalski’s and we’re in a lot of the coops here in the Twin Cities,” she said. “We’re hoping we can meet our customers at both places. And it’s kind of nice, not waking up too early!”
The Recipe that Every Afghan Family Has—and Modifies
Sajady noted that green chutney is a staple throughout Afghanistan. “But everybody has their own way that their mom makes it, or their family makes it, for sure,” she said. Which makes it the Afghan counterpart to many other green condiments across the world—salsa verde, basbaas, chimichurri, to name a few.
As for what her own mother thinks of Maazah’s success, apparently maternal pride is another common factor across food cultures. “She loves it. I think she’s a little surprised that we started from making 25 bottles at a time to moving into a commercial kitchen, and now moving to somebody else making it for us.” Part of her mother’s surprise may be that this type of food entrepreneurship isn’t often done in Afghanistan. “We don’t know a lot of people that have done this before, taking their family’s cherished recipes and sharing with this many people. So she was surprised, but mostly, I think she’s just so happy that we get to share this part of our family with a lot of people and on a bigger scale.”
Minnesota Adoption of an Afghan Condiment
As the summers at farmers markets passed, the Sajadys increasingly heard stories from Minnesotans who began to play with the chutney and found that it was essentially usable everywhere, from eggs to leftovers to hot dogs to kebabs to guacamole. Sajady has advised many people to add it into one of Minnesota’s favorite summer side: Classic potato salad. “I make a very normal potato salad, but then I will add chutney, and it’s so much better.”
Currently Maazah has three products, the chutney in original and hot versions and a vegan aioli. However, there are more possibilities on the horizon. In August, Maazah will launch a mango chutney. “This is for our non-cilantro people,” she said, referring to people with the unfortunate gene that makes cilantro taste like soap to them. “We wanted to make something for them. It’s a little bit sweeter than the original chutney, with mango, a little onion, mustard seed, some different spices that are from our heritage. And then we add a little bit of cardamom.” As part of the development process, they saw great potential for the mango chutney as part of a charcuterie board with a sweet, soft cheese and dried salami.