Yes, you can. Create (or use existing) partition for it and use ext4 as a filesystem. Partition, u-boot and kernel is all that is required. 2GB should be enough for testing at least. Also, you can use swap partition on emmc so you don't need to create one. Those of interest could tell me what they feel are the most important features in kernel or otherwise, that should just work and what are the most unimportant ones.