The specific chip option is probably the best for a commercial application.
However, the use of an 8051 is good for educational purposes. Our students work with an 8051 based project, which is able to record and play back voice using your schema, but replacing the eeprom with an IDE hard-disk unit.
I can send you a copy of the the printed matter we give to the students. It is written in Spanish; even if you can't read this language, the schematic diagrams might be useful for you.

Alfredo del Rio.