Edible Food Finds: Twin Light Smokehouse

Photos by Linda Campos

Melissa Marshall’s plans to launch a new business in 2020 went up in smoke. That’s not to say her goals were suddenly put on hold by the global pandemic: No, Marshall—who joined her family’s seafood company, Cape Ann Fresh Catch (CAFC), in late 2019—literally engulfed some of her best-selling products in the smoke of burning hickory wood chips.

Twin Light Smokehouse debuted in June 2020, adding smoked seafood to CAFC’s lineup available at local retailers, farmers markets and in its weekly seafood shares. (Working directly with Gulf of Maine and other fishers since 2009, CAFC is the largest community-supported fishery in the U.S.).

Made with the same top-quality fish that CAFC sources from its partners in the Atlantic, Twin Light Smokehouse products—like hot-smoked Faroe Islands salmon, smoked mussels in oil and finnan haddie, a Scottish style of cold-smoked haddock—do not lose their ocean flavor to smoke.

Try the salmon flaked on top of a salad or grain bowl, or take a cue from Machaca, a Gloucester cantina, which uses it in smoked salmon tacos. Finnan haddie makes a great chowder, or serve it atop toast. The mussels are a happy-hour snack right out of the container with chips or crackers, and Marshall recommends saving the oil to make a vinaigrette. Tossed with pasta and flecked with parsley, smoked mussels in oil also make an easy main course.

Marshall started smoking seafood last year with some recipes and plenty of advice from Paul “Sasquatch” Cohan, who sold his longtime operation, Sasquatch Smokehouse, to CAFC as he retired. Initially, CAFC revived the Sasquatch brand, but as they added new, locally fished products, Marshall wanted to change the name and logo to reflect a sense of place.

“He is Sasquatch,” Marshall says, describing her mentor, a retired Gloucester fisherman. “It needed our own take on it.”

Twin Light is named for a landmark on Thacher Island in Marshall’s hometown of Rockport, visible from Gloucester’s Good Harbor Beach. Its logo features CAFC’s fish icon, too. “We wanted to tie it all together,” Marshall says.

Marshall returned to the North Shore after eight years in Shanghai, where she was a global sourcing manager for a pet supply company. She also owns an insect-repellent clothing company called NoBu.gs. She was looking for her next entrepreneurial endeavor when she temporarily signed on to help her mother, Donna, then the director of CAFC, build a new website. Donna retired a few months later, and Melissa ended up taking over the company. (The elder Marshall is “still my sounding board,” Melissa says.)

It was in the midst of a revival for Fresh Catch: Demand for their seafood soared during the pandemic. “It got really busy, going from a couple hundred pounds of fish a week to over 1,000,” Marshall says. But, “all we had to do was work.” Spring of 2020 was also when Cohan came knocking, and Marshall saw the opportunity to buy Sasquatch as a creative outlet. “So, we just started grinding it out.”

Marshall applied for and received state grants to support Twin Light’s growth with a larger, more efficient smoker. Plans are also in motion to knock down a wall and expand the smokehouse within the building Twin Light shares with other Gloucester small businesses, including Pigeon Cove Ferments.

That means more smoked seafood to come—and more ways to support Atlantic aquaculture. Marshall hopes to experiment with new products and bring back popular small-batch creations of the past year, like SOS Rockefeller, an herby smoked oyster pâté it created in collaboration with the Woods Hole Sea Grant environmental stewardship program. The SOS name stands for “smoked oyster spread,” but the product also assisted oyster farmers who saw demand plummet during the pandemic while restaurants were closed, Marshall says.

“I like the idea of helping out more local businesses with their fish products,” she says. “It just fits together really nicely with what we do.” For more information and a list of markets carrying Twin Light Smokehouse products, visit: twinlightsmoke.com and capeannfreshcatch.org/collections/house-smoked-seafood

This story appeared in the Fall 2021 issue.