Marinating

Ginger, garlic, green onions, soy, lemon. These are the ingredients for CHamoru marinade. It’s from Guam, an island of fewer than 200,000 people, set deep in the Pacific Ocean—about halfway between Japan and Australia. This classic marinade tells many stories: that of geography, and the ways in which ingredients flow across southeast Asia; that of the CHamoru, the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands; that of US colonization.

Guam is lush and fertile, and crops grow readily due to its humid, tropical climate. Honeydew, cantaloupe, watermelon, and a small melon known as the pipinu; citrus such as lemonchina, calamansi, tangerines, and pomelos; trees bearing coconuts, papayas, bananas, guavas, star fruits, gooseberries, mangoes, avocados, breadfruit, soursops, and jackfruit—all growing on an island perfumed by ginger blossoms, plumeria, and jasmine. Yet despite the lushness and abundance of the landscape, the food people eat in Guam is perhaps not what you’d expect, and in many ways mirrors the cuisines of Caribbean islands halfway across the planet.